
Book ..4 a *//-* 

Gopyiightls 10 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



SHAKESPEARE'S 



AS YOU LIKE IT 



INTRODUCTION, AND NOTES EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL. 
FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES. 

BY THE 

Rev. HENRY N. HUDSON, LL.D. 



GINN & COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO . LONDON 



LIBRARY of O0NGRES3 
J wo GoDies Received 

JUN 23 1908 

Mo*, 2-f '<?«£ 
COPY B, 






SfffirF 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by 

Henry N. Hudson, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington 

56.7 



tEftt gtfteneum -gregg 

GINN & COMPANY • PRO- 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 



INTRODUCTION 



Date of the Composition. 

AS YOU LIKE IT was registered at the Stationers', in 
London, on the 4th of August, 1600. Two other of 
Shakespeare's plays, and one of Ben Jonson's were entered 
at the same time ; all of them under an injunction, " to be 
stayed." In regard to the other two of Shakespeare's plays, 
the stay appears to have been soon removed, as both of them 
were entered again in the course of the same month, and 
published before the end of that year. In the case of As 
You Like It, the stay seems to have been kept up ; per- 
haps because its continued success on the stage made the 
theatrical company unwilling to part with their interest in it. 

This is the only contemporary notice of the play that has 
been discovered. As it was not mentioned in the list given 
by Francis Meres in 1598, we are probably warranted in 
presuming it had not been heard of at that time. The play 
has a line, " Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?" 
apparently quoted from Marlowe's version of Hero and 
Leander, which was published in 1598. So that we may 
safely conclude the play to have been written some time 
between that date and the date of the forecited entry at the 
Stationers' ; that is, when the Poet was in his thirty-sixth or 
thirty-seventh year. The play was never printed, that we 
know of, till in the folio of 1623. 

3 



4 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

Before passing from this branch of the subject, perhaps I 
ought to cite a curious piece of tradition, clearly pointing 
to the play in hand. Gilbert Shakespeare, a brother of 
William, lived till after the Restoration, which occurred in 
1660; and Oldys tells us of "the faint, general, and al- 
most lost ideas " which the old man had, of having once 
seen the Poet act a part in one of his own comedies ; 
" wherein, being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a 
long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping, that he was 
forced to be carried by another person to a table, at which 
he was seated among some company who were eating, and 
one of them sung a song." This could have been none 
other than the " goold old man" Adam, in and about whom 
we have so much noble thought ; and we thus learn that his 
character, beautiful in itself, yet more so for this circum- 
stance, was sustained by the Poet himself. 

Sources of the Plot. 

In regard to the originals of this play, two sources have 
been pointed out, — The Cook's Tale of Gamelyn, sometime 
attributed to Chaucer, but upon better advice excluded from 
his works ; and a novel by Thomas Lodge entitled Rosalynd ; 
Enphues' Golden Legacy. As the Tale of Gamelyn was not 
printed till more than a century later, it has been questioned 
whether Shakespeare ever saw it. Nor indeed can much be 
alleged as indicating that he ever did : one point there is, 
however, that may have some weight that way. An old 
knight, Sir John of Boundis, being about to die, calls in his 
wise friends to advise him touching the distribution of his prop- 
erty among his three sons. They advise him to settle all his 
lands on the eldest, and leave the youngest without any thing. 
Gamelyn, the youngest, being his favourite son, he rejects 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

their advice, and bestows the largest portion upon him. The 
Poet goes much more according to their advice ; Orlando, 
who answers to Gamelyn, having no share in the bulk of his 
father's estate. A few other resemblances, also, may be 
traced, wherein the play differs from Lodge's novel ; though 
none of them are so strong as to force the inference that 
Shakespeare must have consulted the Tale. Nor, in truth, is 
the matter of much consequence, save as bearing upon the 
question whether the Poet was of a mind to be unsatisfied 
with such printed books as lay in his way. I would not 
exactly affirm him to have been "a hunter of manuscripts " ; 
but indications are not wanting, that he sometimes had 
access to them : nor is it at all unlikely that one so greedy of 
intellectual food, so eager and so apt to make the most of all 
the means within his reach, should have gone beyond the 
printed resources of his time. Besides, there can be no ques- 
tion that Lodge was very familiar with the Tale of Gamelyn : 
he follows it so closely in a large part of his novel as to leave 
scarce any doubt that he wrote with the manuscript before 
him • and if he, who was also sometime a player, availed him- 
self of such sources, why may not Shakespeare have done the 
same? 

The practical use of such inquiries is, that they exhibit the 
Poet in the character where I like especially to view him, 
namely, as an earnest and diligent seeker after knowledge, 
and as building himself up in intelligence and power by 
much the same means as are found to serve in the case of 
other men. He himself tells us that "ignorance is the curse 
of God, knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to Heaven." 
Assuredly he was a great student as well as a great genius ; 
as full of aptness to learn as of force to create. If he had 
great faculties to work with, he was also a great worker in 



^ 



6 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

the use of them. Nor is it best for us to think of him as 
being raised by natural gifts above the common methods and 
processes of high intellectual achievement. 

Lodge's Rosalynd was first printed in 1590; and its pop- 
ularity appears in that it was reprinted in 1592, and again in 
1598. Steevens pronounced it a " worthless original" ; but 
this sweeping sentence is so unjust as to breed some doubt 
whether he had read it. Compared with the general run of 
popular literature then in vogue, the novel has no little mer- 
it ; and is very well entitled to the honour of having contrib- 
uted to one of the most delightful poems ever written. A 
rather ambitious attempt indeed at fine writing ; pedantic in 
style, not a little blemished with the elaborate euphemism of 
the time, and occasionally running into absurdity and inde- 
corum ; nevertheless, upon the whole, it is a varied and pleas- 
ing narrative, with passages of great force and beauty, and 
many touches of noble sentiment, and sometimes informed 
with a pastoral sweetness and simplicity quite charming. 

To make a full sketch of the novel, in so far as the Poet 
borrowed from it, would occupy too much space. Still it 
seems desirable to indicate, somewhat, the extent of the 
Poet's obligations in this case ; which can be best done, I 
apprehend, by stating, as compactly as may be, a portion of 
the story. 

Sir John of Bordeaux, being at the point of death, called 
in his three sons, Saladyne, Fernandine, and Rosader, and 
divided his wealth among them, giving nearly a third to 
Rosader the youngest. After a short period of hypocritical 
mourning for his father, Saladyne went to studying how he 
might defraud his brothers, and ravish their legacies. He 
put Fernandine to school at Paris, and kept Rosader as his 
foot-boy. Rosader bore this patiently for three years, and 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

then his spirit rose against it. While he was deep in medi- 
tation on the point, Saladyne came along and began to 
jerk him with rough speeches. After some interchange of 
angry and insulting words, Rosader " seized a great rake, 
and let drive at him," and soon brought him to terms. Sa- 
ladyne, feigning sorrow for what he had done, then drew 
the youth, who was of a free and generous nature, into a 
reconciliation, till he might devise how to finish him out of 
the way. 

Now, Gerismond, the rightful King of France, had been 
driven into exile, and his crown usurped, by Torismond, 
his younger brother. To amuse the people, and keep them 
from thinking of the banished King, the usurper appointed 
a day of wrestling and tournament; when a Norman, of 
great strength and stature, who had wrestled down as many 
as undertook with him, was to stand against all comers. 
Saladyne went to the Norman secretly, and engaged him 
with rich rewards to dispatch Rosader, in case Rosader 
should come within his grasp. He then pricked his brother 
on to the wrestling, telling him how much honour it would 
bring him, and that he was the only one to uphold the 
renown of the family. The youth, full of heroic thoughts, 
was glad of such an opportunity. When the time came, 
Torismond went to preside over the games, taking with him 
the Twelve Peers of France, his daughter Alinda, his niece 
Rosalynd, and all the most famous beauties of the Court. 
Rosalynd, "upon whose cheeks there seemed a battle be- 
tween the graces," was the centre of attraction, "and made 
the cavaliers crack their lances with more courage." The 
tournament being over, the Norman offered himself as gen- 
eral challenger at wrestling. While he is in the full career 
of success, Rosader alights from his horse, and presents him 



8 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

self for a trial. He quickly puts an end to the Norman's 
wrestling ; though not till his eyes and thoughts have got 
badly entangled with the graces of Rosalynd. On the other 
side, she is equally smitten with his handsome person and 
heroic bearing, insomuch that, the spectacle being over, she 
takes from her neck a jewel, and sends it to him by a page, 
as an assurance of her favour. 

This outline, as far as it goes, almost describes, word for 
word, the course and order of events in the play. And so 
it is, in a great measure, through the other parts and inci- 
dents of the plot ; such as the usurper's banishment of his 
niece, and the escape of his daughter, along with her ; their 
arrival in the Forest of Arden, where Rosalynd's father has 
taken refuge ; their encounter with the shepherds, their pur- 
chase of the cottage, and their adventures in the pastoral 
life. So, too, in the flight of Rosader to the same Forest, 
taking along with him the old servant, who is called Adam 
Spencer, his carving of love-verses in the bark of trees, his 
meeting with the disguised Rosalynd, and the wooing and 
marrying that enrich the forest scenes. 

Thus much may suffice to show that the Poet has here 
borrowed a good deal of excellent matter. With what judg- 
ment and art the borrowed matter was used by him can 
only be understood on a careful study of his workmanship. 
In no one of his comedies indeed has he drawn more freely 
from others ; nor, I may add, is there any one wherein he 
has enriched his drawings more liberally from the glory of 
his own genius. To appreciate his wisdom as shown in 
what he left unused, one must read the whole of Lodge's 
novel. In that work we find no traces of Jacques, or Touch- 
stone, or Audrey ; nothing, indeed, that could yield the 
slightest hint towards either of those characters. It scarce 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

need be said that these superaddings are enough of them- 
selves to transform the whole into another nature ; pouring 
through all its veins a free and lively circulation of the most 
original wit and humour and poetry. And by a judicious 
indefiniteness as to persons and places, the Poet has greatly 
idealized the work, throwing it at a romantic distance, and 
weaving about it all the witchery of poetical perspective; 
while the whole falls in so smoothly with the laws of the 
imagination, that the breaches of geographical order are 
never noticed save by such as cannot understand poetry 
without a map. 

Dramatic Originality. 

No one at all competent to judge in the matter will sup- 
pose that Shakespeare could have been really indebted to 
Lodge, or to whomsoever else, for any of the characters in 
As You Like It. He merely borrowed certain names and 
incidents for the bodying-forth of conceptions purely his 
own. The resemblance is all in the drapery and circum- 
stances of the representation, not in the individuals. For 
instance, we can easily imagine Rosalind in an hundred 
scenes not here represented ; for she is a substantive per- 
sonal being, such as we may detach and consider apart from 
the particular order wherein she stands : but we can dis- 
cover in her no likeness to Lodge's Rosalynd, save that of 
name and situation : take away the similarity here, and there 
is nothing to indicate any sort of relationship between the 
heroines of the play and the novel. And it is considerable 
that, though the Poet here borrows so freely, still there is no 
sign of any borrowing in the work itself : we can detect no 
foreign influences, no second-hand touches, nothing to suggest 
that any part of the thing had ever been thought of before ; 



10 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

what he took being so thoroughly assimilated with what he 
gave, that the whole seems to have come fresh from Nature 
and his own mind : so that, had the originals been lost, we 
should never have suspected there were any. 

Shakespeare generally preferred to make up his plots and 
stories out of such materials as were most familiar to his 
audience. Of this we have many examples \ but the fact 
is too well known to need dwelling upon. Though surpass- 
ingly rich in fertility and force of invention, he was not- 
withstanding singularly economical and sparing in the use 
of it. Which aptly shows how free he was from every thing 
like a sensational spirit or habit of mind. Nature was every 
thing to him, novelty nothing, or next to nothing. The true, 
not the new, was always the soul of his purpose ; than which 
nothing could better approve the moral healthiness of his 
genius. Hence, in great part, his noble superiority to the 
intellectual and literary fashions of his time. He understood 
these perfectly ; but he deliberately rejected them, or rather 
struck quite above or beyond them. We rarely meet with 
any thing that savours of ??wdishness in his workmanship. 
Probably the best judgment ever pronounced upon him is 
Ben Jonson's, "He was not of an age, but for all time." 
For even so it is with the permanences of our intellectual and 
imaginative being that he deals, and not with any transiencies 
of popular or fashionable excitement or pursuit. And as he 
cared little for the new, so he was all the stronger in that 
which does not grow old, and which lives on from age to age 
in the perennial, unwithering freshness of Truth and Nature. 
For the being carried hither and thither by the shifting 
mental epidemics of the day, what is it, after all, but a tacit 
confession of weakness or disease? proving, at the least, 
that one has not strength of mind enough to " feel the soul 



INTRODUCTION. II 

of Nature," or to live at peace with the solidities of reason. 
And because the attractions of mere novelty had no force 
with Shakespeare ; because his mind dwelt far above the 
currents of intellectual fashion and convention ; therefore 
his dramas stand " exempt from the wrongs of time " ; and 
the study of them is, with but a single exception, just our 
best discipline in those forms and sources of interest which 
underlie and outlast all the flitting specialties of mode and 
custom, — 

Truths that wake, to perish never ; 

Which neither listlessness nor mad endeavour, 

Nor Man nor Boy, 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
Can utterly abolish or destroy. 



Characterization . 

As You Like It is exceedingly rich and varied in charac- 
ter. The several persons stand out round and clear in them- 
selves, yet their distinctive traits in a remarkable degree sihk 
quietly into the feelings without reporting themselves in the 
understanding ; for which cause the clumsy methods of criti- 
cism are little able to give them expression. Subtile indeed 
must be the analysis that should reproduce them to the intel- 
lect without help from the Dramatic Art. 

Properly speaking, the play has no hero ; for, though 
Orlando occupies the foreground, the characters are mainly 
co-ordinate ; the design of the work precluding any subordi- 
nation among them. Diverted by fortune from all their 
cherished plans and purposes, they pass before us in just that 
moral and intellectual dishabille which best reveals their 
indwelling graces of mind and heart. Schlegel remarks that 



12 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

li the Poet seems to have aimed, throughout, at showing that 
nothing is wanting, to call forth the poetry that has its dwell- 
ing in Nature and the human mind, but to throw off all 
artificial restraint, and restore both to their native liberty." 
This is well said ; but it should be observed withal that the 
persons have already been " purified by suffering " ; and that 
it was under the discipline of social restraint that they devel- 
oped the virtues which make them go right without such 
restraint, as indeed they do, while we are conversing with 
them. Because they have not hitherto been altogether free to 
do as they would, therefore it is that they are good and beau- 
tiful in doing as they have a mind to now. Let us beware of 
attributing to Nature, as we call it, that goodness which pro- 
ceeds from habits generated under Gospel culture and the laws 
of Christian society. After all, the ordinary conditions of 
social and domestic life give us far more than they take away. 
It requires a long schooling in the prescriptions of order and 
rectitude, to fit us for being left to ourselves. In some sense 
indeed it is a great enlargement of liberty to be rid of all the 
loves and duties and reverences which the Past may have 
woven about us ; and many there are who seem to place free- 
dom of mind in having nothing to look up to, nothing to 
respect outside of themselves. But human virtue does not 
grow in this way ; and the stream must soon dry if cut off 
from the spring. And I have no sympathy with those who 
would thus crush all tender and precious memories out of us, 
and then give the name of freedom to the void thus created 
in our souls. The liberty that goes by unknitting the bands 
of reverence and dissolving the ties that draw and hold men 
together in the charities of a common life, is not the liberty 
for me, nor is it the liberty that Shakespeare teaches. I am 
much rather minded to say, with a lawyer-poet of our time, 



INTRODUCTION. 1 3 

If we lose 
All else, we will preserve our household laws ; 
Nor let the license of these fickle times 
Subvert the holy shelter which command 
Of fathers, and undoubting faith of sons, 
Rear'd for our shivering virtues.* 

It is true, however, that in this play the better transpirations 
of character are mainly conducted in the eye of Nature, where 
the passions and vanities that so much disfigure human life 
find little to stir them into act. In the freedom of their 
woodland resort, and with the native inspirations of the place 
to kindle and gladden them, the persons have but to live out 
the handsome thoughts which they have elsewhere acquired. 
Man's tyranny has indeed driven them into banishment ; but 
their virtues are much more the growth of the place they are 
banished from than of the place they are banished to. 

Orlando. 

Orlando is altogether such a piece of young-manhood as it 
does one good to be with. He has no special occasion for 
heroism, yet we feel that there is plenty of heroic stuff in him. 
Brave, gentle, modest, and magnanimous ; never thinking of 
his high birth but to avoid dishonouring it j in his noble- 
heartedness, forgetting, and causing others to forget, his 
nobility of rank ; he is every way just such a man as all true 
men would choose for their best friend. His persecuting 
brother, talking to himself, describes him as " never school'd, 
and yet learned ; full of noble device ; of all sorts enchant- 
ingly beloved ; and indeed so much in the heart of the world, 
and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I 
am altogether misprised " : and this description is amply 

* Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd : Tragedy of Glencoe ; or the Fate of the 
Macdonalds, i. i. 



14 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

justified by his behaviour. The whole intercourse between 
him and his faithful old servant Adam is replete on both 
sides with that full-souled generosity in whose eye the nobil- 
ities of Nature are always sure of recognition. 

Shakespeare evidently delighted in a certain natural har- 
mony of character wherein virtue is free and spontaneous, 
like the breathing of perfect health. And such is Orlando. 
He is therefore good without effort ; nay, it would require 
some effort for him to be otherwise ; his soul gravitating 
towards goodness as of its own accord : " In his proper 
motion he ascends ; descent and fall to him is adverse." 
And perhaps the nearest he comes to being aware of his 
virtue is when his virtue triumphs over a mighty temptation ; 
that is, when he sees his unnatural brother in extreme peril ; 

But kindness, nobler ever than revenge, 
And nature, stronger than his just occasion, 

made him risk his own life to save him ; and even in this 
case the divine art of overcoming evil with good seems 
more an instinct than a conscious purpose with him. This 
is one of the many instances wherein the Poet delivers the 
highest results of Christian discipline as drawing so deeply 
and so creatively into the heart, as to work out with the 
freedom and felicity of native original impulse. 

I must dismiss Orlando with a part of his tilt of wit with 
Jaques, as that very well illustrates the composition of the 
man : 

Jaq. I thank you for your company ; but, good faith, I had as lief have 
been myself alone. 

Orlan. And so had I ; but yet, for fashion's sake, I thank you too for 
your society. 

Jaq. God b' wi' you : let's meet as little as we can. 

Orlan. I do desire we may be better strangers. 



INTRODUCTION. 1 5 

Jaq. I pray you, mar no more trees with writing love-songs in their 
barks. 

Orlan. I pray you, mar no more of my verses with reading them ill- 
favouredly. 

Jaq. Rosalind is your love's name ? 

Orlan. Yes, just. 

"Jaq. I do not like her name. 

Orlan. There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened. 

Jaq. What stature is she of ? 

Orlan. Just as high as my heart. 

Jaq. You have a nimble wit : I think it was made of Atalanta's heels. 
Will you sit down with me ? and we two will rail against our mistress the 
world and all our misery. 

Orlan. I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I 
know most faults. 

The Banished Duke. 

The banished Duke exemplifies the best sense of nature 
as thoroughly informed and built up with Christian discipline 
and religious efficacy • so that the asperities of life do but 
make his thoughts run the smoother. How sweet, yet how 
considerative and firm, is every thing about his temper and 
moral frame ! He sees all that is seen by the most keen- 
eyed satirist, yet is never moved to be satirical, because he 
looks with wiser and therefore kindlier eyes. The enmity 
of Fortune is fairly disarmed by his patience ; her shots are 
all wasted against his breast, garrisoned as it is with the 
forces of charity and peace : his soul is made storm-proof by 
gentleness and truth : exile, penury, the ingratitude of men, 
the malice of the elements, what are they to him ? he has 
the grace to sweeten away their venom, and to smile the 
sting out of them. He loves to stay himself upon the com- 
pensations of life, and to feed his gentler affections by dwell- 
ing upon the good which adversity opens to him, or the evil 
from which it withdraws him ; and so he rejoices in finding 



l6 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

" these woods more free from peril than the envious Court." 
In his philosophy, so bland, benignant, and contemolative, 
the mind tastes the very luxury of rest, and has an antepast 
of measureless content. 

Touchstone. 

Touchstone, though he nowhere strikes so deep a chord 
within us as the poor Fool in King Lear, is, I think, the most 
entertaining of Shakespeare's privileged characters. And he 
is indeed a mighty delectable fellow ! wise too, and full of the 
most insinuative counsel. How choicely does his grave, acute 
nonsense moralize the scenes wherein he moves ! Professed 
clown though he be, and as such ever hammering away with 
artful awkwardness at a jest, a strange kind of humorous re- 
spect still waits upon him notwithstanding. It is curious to 
observe how the Poet takes care to let lis know from the first, 
that beneath the affectations of his calling some precious 
sentiments have been kept alive ; that far within the Fool 
there is laid up a secret reserve of the man, ready to leap forth 
and combine with better influences as soon as the incrusta- 
tions of art are thawed and broken up. This is partly done 
in the scene where Rosalind and Celia arrange for their flight 
from the usurper's Court. Rosalind proposes, 

But, cousin, what if we assay'd to steal 

The clownish Fool out of your father's Court ? 

Would he not be a comfort to our travel ? 

And Celia replies, 

He'll go along o'er the wide world with me : 
Leave me alone to woo him. 

Where we learn that some remnants, at least, of a manly 
heart in him have asserted their force in the shape of unselfish 



INTRODUCTION. 1 7 

regards, strong as life, for whatever is purest and loveliest in 
the characters about him. He would rather starve or freeze, 
with Celia near him, than feed high and lie warm where his 
eye cannot find her. If, with this fact in view, our honest 
esteem does not go out towards him, then we, I think, are 
fools in a worse sense than he is. 

So much for the substantial manhood of Touchstone, and 
for the Poet's human-heartedness in thus putting us in com- 
munication with it. As for the other points of his character, 
I scarce know how to draw a reader into them by any turn of 
analysis. Used to a life cut off from human sympathies ; 
stripped of the common responsibilities of the social state ; 
living for no end but to make aristocratic idlers laugh ; 
one therefore whom nobody heeds enough to resent or 
be angry at any thing he says ; — of course his habit is to 
speak all for effect, nothing for truth : instead of reflecting 
the natural force and image of things, his vocation is to wrest 
and trans-shape them from their true form and pressure. Thus 
a strange wilfulness and whimsicality has wrought itself into 
the substance of his mind. He takes nothing for what it is 
in itself, but only for the odd quirks of thought he can twist 
out of it. Yet his nature is not so "subdued to what it works 
in " but that, amidst the scenes and inspirations of the Forest, 
the Fool quickly slides into the man ; the supervenings of the 
place so running into and athwart what he brings with him, 
that his character comes to be as dappled and motley as his 
dress. Even the new passion which there overtakes him has 
a touch of his wilfulness in it : when he falls in love, as he 
really does, nothing seems to inspire and draw him more than 
the unattractiveness of the object ; thus approving that even 
so much of nature as survives in him is not content to run 
in natural channels. 

\ 



l8 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

Jaques the Juicy. 

Jaques is, I believe, an universal favourite, as indeed he 
well may be, for he is certainly one of the Poet's happiest 
conceptions. Without being at all unnatural, he has an 
amazing fund of peculiarity. Enraptured out of his senses 
at the voice of a song ; thrown into a paroxysm of laughter 
at sight of the motley-clad and motley-witted Fool; and 
shedding the twilight of his merry-sad spirit over all the 
darker spots of human life and character ; he represents the 
abstract and sum-total of an utterly useless yet perfectly 
harmless man, seeking wisdom by abjuring its first principle. 
An odd choice mixture of reality and affectation, he does 
nothing but think, yet avowedly thinks to no purpose ; or 
rather thinking is with him its own end. On the whole, if in 
Touchstone there is much of the philosopher in the Fool, in 
Jaques there is not less of the fool in the philosopher ; so that 
the German critic, Ulrici, is not so wide of the mark in calling 
them " two fools." 

Jaques is equally wilful, too, with Touchstone, in his turn 
of thought and speech, though not so conscious of it ; and 
as he plays his part more to please himself, so he is propor- 
tionably less open to the healing and renovating influences 
of Nature. We cannot justly affirm, indeed, that " the soft 
blue sky did never melt into his heart," as Wordsworth says 
of his Peter Bell ; but he shows more of resistance than all 
the other persons to the poetries and eloquences of the place. 
Tears are a great luxury to him : he sips the cup of woe with 
all the gust of an epicure. Still his temper is by no means 
sour : fond of solitude, he is nevertheless far from being 
unsocial. The society of good men, provided they be in ad- 
versity, has great charms for him. He likes to be with those 



INTRODUCTION. 19 

who, though deserving the best, still have the worst : virtue 
wronged, buffeted, oppressed, is his special delight ; because 
such moral discrepancies offer the most salient points to his 
cherished meditations. He himself enumerates nearly all the 
forms of melancholy except his own, which I take to be the 
melancholy of self-love. And its effect in his case is not un- 
like that of Touchstone's art ; inasmuch as he greatly delights 
to see things otherwise than as they really are, and to make 
them speak out some meaning that is not in them ; that is, 
their plain and obvious sense is not to his taste. Nevertheless 
his melancholy is grateful, because free from any dash of 
malignity. His morbid habit of mind seems to spring from 
an excess of generative virtue. And how racy and original 
is every thing that comes from him ! as if it bubbled up from 
the centre of his being ; while his perennial fulness of matter 
makes his company always delightful. The Duke loves 
especially to meet him in his "sullen fits," because he then 
overflows with his most idiomatic humour. After all, the 
worst that can be said of Jaques is, that the presence of men 
who are at once fortunate and deserving corks him up ; 
which may be only another way of saying that he cannot 
open out and run over, save where things are going wrong. 

Rosalind and Celia. 

It is something uncertain whether Jaques or Rosalind be 
the greater attraction : there is enough in either to make the 
play a continual feast ; though her charms are less liable to 
be staled by use, because they result from health of mind and 
symmetry of character ; so that in her presence the head and 
the heart draw together perfectly. I mean that she never 
starts any moral or emotional reluctances in our converse 
with her : all our sympathies go along with her freely, be- 



20 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

cause she never jars upon them, or touches them against the 
grain. 

For wit, this strange, queer, lovely being is fully equal to 
Beatrice, yet nowise resembling her. A soft, subtile, nimble 
essence, consisting in one knows not what, and springing up 
one can hardly tell how, her wit neither stings nor burns, but 
plays briskly and airily over all things within its reach, enrich- 
ing and adorning them ; insomuch that one could ask no 
greater pleasure than to be the continual theme of it. In its 
irrepressible vivacity it waits not for occasion, but runs on for 
ever, and we wish it to run on for ever : we have a sort of 
faith that her dreams are made up of cunning, quirkish, graceful 
fancies ; her wits being in a frolic even when she is asleep. 
And her heart seems a perennial spring of affectionate cheer- 
fulness : no trial can break, no sorrow chill, her flow of 
spirits ; even her sighs are breathed forth in a wrappage of 
innocent mirth ; an arch, roguish smile irradiates her sad- 
dest tears. No sort of unhappiness can live in her company : 
it is a joy even to stand her chiding; for, "faster than her 
tongue doth make offense, her eye doth heal it up." 

So much for her choice idiom of wit. But I must not 
pass from this part of the theme without noting also how 
aptly she illustrates the Poet's peculiar use of humour. For 
I suppose the difference of wit and humour is too well 
understood to need any special exposition. But the two 
often go together ; though there is a form of wit, much 
more common, that burns and dries the juices all out of the 
mind, and turns it into a kind of sharp, stinging wire. Now 
Rosalind's sweet establishment is thoroughly saturated with 
humour, and this too of the freshest and wholesomest qual- 
ity. And the effect of her humour is, as it were, to lubricate 
all her faculties, and make her thoughts run brisk and glib 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

even when grief has possession of her heart. Through this 
interfusive power, her organs of play are held in perfect 
concert with her springs of serious thought. Hence she is 
outwardly merry and inwardly sad at the same time. We 
may justly say that she laughs out her sadness, or. plays out 
her seriousness : the sorrow that is swelling her breast puts 
her wits and spirits into a frolic ; and in the mirth that over- 
flows through her tongue we have a relish of the grief with 
which her heart is charged. And our sympathy with her 
inward state is the more divinely moved, forasmuch as she 
thus, with indescribable delicacy, touches it through a mas- 
querade of playfulness. Yet, beneath all her frolicsomeness, 
we feel that there is a firm basis of thought and womanly 
dignity; so that she never laughs away our respect. 

It is quite remarkable how, in respect of her disguise, 
Rosalind just reverses the conduct of Viola, yet with much 
the same effect. For, though she seems as much at home 
in her male attire as if she had always worn it, this never 
strikes us otherwise than as an exercise of skill for the per- 
fecting of her masquerade. And on the same principle her 
occasional freedoms of speech serve to deepen our sense of 
her innate delicacy; they being manifestly intended as a 
part of her disguise, and springing from the feeling that it 
is far less indelicate to go a little out of her character, in 
order to prevent any suspicion of her sex, than it would be 
to hazard such a suspicion by keeping strictly within her 
character. In other words, her free talk bears much the 
same relation to her character as her dress does to her per- 
son, and is therefore becoming to her even on the score 
of feminine modesty. — Celia appears well worthy of a place 
beside her whose love she shares and repays. Instinct with 
the soul of moral beauty and female tenderness, the friend- 



22 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

ship of these more-than-sisters "mounts to the seat of grace 
within the mind." 

We still have slept together ; 
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together ; 
« And, wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans, 
Still we went coupled and inseparable. 

General Characteristics. 

The general drift and temper, or, as some of the German 
critics would say, the ground-idea of this play, is aptly 
hinted by the title. As for the beginnings of what is here 
represented, these do not greatly concern us ; most of them 
lie back out of our view, and the rest are soon lost sight of 
in what grows out of them ; but the issues, of which there 
are many, are all exactly to our mind ; we feel them to be 
just about right, and would not have them otherwise. For 
example, touching Frederick and Oliver, our wish is that 
they should repent, and repair the wrong they have done, 
in brief, that they should become good ; which is precisely 
what takes place ; and as soon as they do this, they natu- 
rally love those who were good before. Jaques, too, is so 
fitted to moralize the discrepancies of human life, so happy 
and at home, and withal so agreeable, in that exercise, that 
we would not he should follow the good Duke when in his 
case those discrepancies are composed. The same might 
easily be shown in respect of the other issues. Indeed I 
dare ask any genial, considerate reader, Does not every 
thing turn out just as you like it? Moreover there is an 
indefinable something about the play that puts us in a 
receptive frame of mind ; that opens the heart, soothes away 
all querulousness and fault-finding, and makes us easy and 
apt to be pleased. Thus the Poet here disposes us to like 



INTRODUCTION. 23 

things as they come, and at the same time takes care that 
they shall come as we like. The whole play indeed is as 
you like it. 

Much has been said by one critic and another about the 
improbabilities in this play. I confess they have never 
troubled me ; and, as I have had no trouble here to get out 
of, I do not well know how to help others out. Wherefore, 
if any one be still annoyed by these things, I will turn him 
over to the elegant criticism of the poet Campbell : " Before 
I say more of this dramatic treasure, I must absolve myself 
by a confession as to some of its improbabilities. Rosalind 
asks her cousin Celia, ' Whither shall we go ? ' and Celia an- 
swers, 'To seek my uncle in the Forest of Arden.' But, 
arrived there, and having purchased a cottage and sheep- 
farm, neither the daughter nor niece of the banished Duke 
seem to trouble themselves much to inquire about either 
father or uncle. The lively and natural-hearted Rosalind 
discovers no impatience to embrace her sire, until she has 
finished her masked courtship with Orlando. But Rosalind 
was in love, as I have been with the comedy these forty 
years ; and love is blind ; for until a late period my eyes were 
never couched so as to see this objection. The truth how- 
ever is, that love is wilfully blind ; and now that my eyes are 
opened, I shut them against the fault. Away with your best- 
proved improbabilities, when the heart has been touched and 
the fancy fascinated." 

As a fitting pendent to this, I may further observe that the 
bringing of lions, serpents, palm-trees, rustic shepherds, and 
banished noblemen together in the Forest of Arden, is a 
strange piece of geographical license, which certain critics 
have not failed to make merry withal. Perhaps they did not 
see that the very grossness of the thing proves it to have 



24 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

been designed. The Poet keeps his geography true enough 
whenever he has cause to do so. He knew, at all events, 
that lions did not roam at large in France. By this irregular 
combination of actual things, he informs the whole with ideal 
effect, giving to this charming issue of his brain " a local 
habitation and a name," that it may link-in with our flesh- 
and-blood sympathies, and at the same time turning it into a 
wild, wonderful, remote, fairy-land region, where all sorts of 
poetical things may take place without the slightest difficulty. 
Of course Shakespeare would not have done thus, but that 
he saw quite through the grand critical humbug which makes 
the proper effect of a work of art depend upon our belief in 
the actual occurrence of the thing represented. But your 
" critic grave and cool," I suppose, is one who, like Words- 
worth's " model of a child," 

Can string you names of districts, cities, towns, 
The whole world over, tight as beads of dew 
Upon a gossamer thread : he sifts, he weighs ; 
All things are put to question ; he must live 
Knowing that he grows wiser every day, 
Or else not live at all, and seeing too 
Each little drop of wisdom as it falls 
Into the dimpling cistern of his heart. 
O, give us once again the wishing-cap 
Of Fortunatus, and the invisible coat 
Of Jack the Giant-killer, Robin Hood, 
And Sabra in the forest with Saint George ! 
The child, whose love is here, at least doth reap 
One precious gain, that he forgets himself. 

As far as I can determine the matter, As You Like It is, 
upon the whole, my favourite of Shakespeare's comedies. 
Yet I should be puzzled to tell why ; for my preference 
springs not so much from any particular points or features, 
wherein it is surpassed by several others, as from the general 



INTRODUCTION. 25 

toning and effect. The whole is replete with a beauty so 
delicate yet so intense, that we feel it everywhere, but can 
never tell especially where it is, or in what it consists. For 
instance, the descriptions of forest scenery come along so 
unsought, and in such easy, quiet, natural touches, that we 
take in the impression without once noticing what it is that 
impresses us. Thus, there is a certain woodland freshness, a 
glad, free naturalness, that creeps and steals into the heart 
before we know it. And the spirit of the place is upon its 
inhabitants, its genius within them : we almost breathe with 
them the fragrance of the Forest, and listen to " the melodies 
of woods and winds and waters," and feel 

The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty, 

That have their haunts in dale, or piny mountain, 

Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring. 

Even the Court Fool, notwithstanding all the crystallizing 
process that has passed upon him, undergoes, as we have 
seen, a sort of rejuvenescence of his inner man, so that his 
wit catches at every turn the fresh hues and odours of his 
new whereabout. I am persuaded indeed that Milton had a 
special eye to this play in the lines, 

And sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, 
Warbles his native wood-notes wild. 

To all which add, that the kindlier sentiments here seem 
playing out in a sort of jubilee. Untied from set purposes 
and definite aims, the persons come forth with their hearts 
already tuned, and so have but to let off their redundant 
music. Envy, jealousy, avarice, revenge, all the passions 
that afflict and degrade society, they have left in the city 
behind them. And they have brought the intelligence and 
refinement of the Court without its vanities and vexations ; 



26 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

so that the graces of art and the simplicities of nature meet 
together in joyous, loving sisterhood. A serene and mellow 
atmosphere of thought encircles and pervades the actors in 
this drama ; as if on purpose to illustrate how 

One impulse from a vernal wood 

May teach you more of man, 
Of moral evil, and of good, 

Than all the sages can. 

Nature throws her protecting arms around them ; Beauty- 
pitches her tents before them ; Heaven rains its riches upon 
them : with " no enemy but Winter and rough weather," 
Peace hath taken up her abode with them ; and they have 
nothing to do but to " fleet the time carelessly, as they did 
in the golden world." 

But no words of mine, I fear, will justify to others my own 
sense of this delectable workmanship. I can hardly think 
of any thing else in the whole domain of Poetry so inspiring 
of the faith that "every flower enjoys the air it breathes." 
The play, indeed, abounds in wild, frolicsome graces which 
cannot be described ; which can only be seen and felt ; and 
which the hoarse voice of Criticism seems to scare away, as 
the crowing of the cocks is said to have scared away the 
fairy spirits from their nocturnal pastimes. I know not how 
I can better dismiss the theme than with some lines from 
Wordsworth, which these scenes have often recalled to my 
thoughts : 

Nature never did betray 
The heart that loved her ; 'tis her privilege 
Through all the years of this our life to lead 
From joy to joy : for she can so inform 
The mind that is within us, so impress 
With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 



INTRODUCTION. 2? 

Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 
The dreary intercourse of daily life. 
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold 
Is full of blessings. 

Partly in confirmation and partly in amplification of my 
own views, as given above, and partly for other reasons, I add 
the following from Professor Dowden's excellent book, enti- 
tled Shakespeare : his Mind and Art, which was written since 
the foregoing pages were first published : 

" Upon the whole, As You Like It is the sweetest and hap- 
piest of all Shakespeare's comedies. No one suffers ; no 
one lives an eager intense life ; there is no tragic interest in 
it, as there is in The Merchant of Venice, as there is in Much 
Ado about Nothing. It is mirthful, but the mirth is sprightly, 
graceful, exquisite ; there is none of the rollicking fun of Sir 
Toby here ; the songs are not ' coziers' catches ' shouted in 
the night-time, 'without any mitigation or remorse of voice,' 
but the solos and duets of pages in the wild-wood, or the 
noisier chorus of foresters. The wit of Touchstone is not 
mere clownage, nor has it any indirect serious significances : 
it is a dainty kind of absurdity worthy to hold comparison 
with the melancholy Jaques. And Orlando in the beauty 
and strength of early manhood, and Rosalind, ' a gallant 
curtle-axe upon her thigh, a boar-spear in her hand,' and the 
bright, tender, loyal womanhood within, — are figures which 
quicken and restore our spirits, as music does, which is 
neither noisy nor superficial, and yet which knows little of 
the deep passion and sorrow of the world. 

" Shakespeare, when he wrote this idyllic play, was him- 
self in the Forest of Arden. He had ended one great 
ambition, — the historical plays; and not yet commenced 



28 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

his tragedies. It was a resting-place. He sends his im- 
agination into the woods to find repose. Instead of the 
Court and camps of England, and the embattled plains of 
France, here was this woodland scene, where the palm-tree, 
the lioness, and the serpent are to be found ; possessed of 
a flora and fauna that flourish in spite of physical geogra- 
phers. There is an open-air feeling throughout the play. 
The dialogue, as has been observed, catches freedom and 
freshness from the atmosphere. After the trumpet-tones of 
Henry the Fifth comes the sweet pastoral strain, so bright, 
so tender. Must it not be all in keeping? Shakespeare 
was not trying to control his melancholy. When he needed 
to do that, Shakespeare confronted his melancholy very pas- 
sionately, and looked it full in the face. Here he needed 
refreshment, a sunlight tempered by forest-boughs, a breeze 
upon his forehead, a stream murmuring in his ears." 



SCENE I. AS YOU LIKE IT. 3 1 

Adam. Yonder comes my master, your brother. 
Orl. Go apart, Adam, and thou shalt hear how he will 
shake me up. [Adam retires. 

Enter Oliver. 

Oli. Now, sir ! what make you here ? G 

Oil. Nothing : I am not taught to make any thing. • 

Oli. What mar you then, sir ? 

Orl. Marry, 7 sir, I am helping you to mar that which God 
made, a poor unworthy brother of yours, with idleness. 

Oli. Marry, sir, be better employed, and be naught a 
while,! 8 

Orl. Shall I keep your hogs, and eat husks with them? 
What prodigal's portion 9 have I spent, that I should come to 
such penury? 

Oli. Know you where you are, sir? 

Orl. O, sir, very well : here in your orchard. 

Oli. Know you before whom, sir ? 

Orl. Ay, better than he I am before knows me. I know 
you are my eldest brother ; and, in the gentle condition of 
blood, you should so know me. The courtesy of nations 
allows you my better, in that you are the first-born ; but the 
same tradition takes not away my blood, were there twenty 
brothers betwixt us : I have as much of my father in me as 

6 " What make you here ? " is old language for " what are you doing 
here ? " A very frequent usage. 

7 Marry was used a good deal in colloquial language as a petty oath or 
intensive; something like the Latin heracle and edepol. This use of marry 
sprang from a custom of swearing by St. Mary the Virgin. 

8 Be naught, or go and be naught, was formerly a petty execration between 
anger and contempt, which has been supplanted by others, as be hanged, be 
cursed, &c. ; awhile, or the while, was added merely to round the phrase. 

9 The allusion to the parable of the Prodigal Son is obvious enough. 



32 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT I. 

you ; albeit, I confess, your coming before me is nearer to 
his reverence. 10 

OIL What, boy ! 

OrL Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this. 11 

Oli, Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain ? 

OrL I am no villain : I am the'youngest son of Sir Roland 
de Bois ; he was my father ; and he is thrice a villain that 
says such a father begot villains. Wert thou not my brother, 
I would not take this hand from thy throat till this other 
had pull'd out thy tongue for saying so : thou hast rail'd 
on thyself. 

Adam. [Coming forward^ Sweet masters, be patient: 
for your father's remembrance, be at accord. 

OIL Let me go, I say. 

OrL I will not, till I please : you shall hear me. My 
father charged you in his will to give me good education : 
you have train'd me like a peasant, obscuring and hiding 
from me all gentleman-like qualities. 12 The spirit of my fath- 
er grows strong in me, and I will no longer endure it : there- 
fore allow me such exercises as may become a gentleman, or 
give me the poor allottery 13 my father left me by testament ; 
with that I will go buy my fortunes. 

OIL And what wilt thou do? beg, when that is spent? 
Well, sir, get you in : I will not long be troubled with you : 

1° Nearer to him in the right of that reverence which was his due. 

11 The word boy naturally provokes and awakens in Orlando the sense 
of his manly powers ; and, with the retort of elder brother, he grasps him with 
firm hands, and makes him feel he is no boy. So in Lodge's story : 
" Though l am eldest by birth, yet, never having attempted any deeds of 
arms, I am youngest to perform any martial exploits." 

12 Qualities here probably means pursuits or occupations ; thus according 
with exercises a little after. The Poet often uses quality so. 

13 Allottery is portion ; that which is allotted. 



SCENE I. AS YOU LIKE IT. 33 

you shall have some part of your will : I pray you, leave 
me. 

Or/. I will no further offend you than becomes me for 
my good. 

OIL Get you with him, you old dog ! 

Adam. Is old dog my reward? Most true, I have lost 
my teeth in your service. — God be with my old master ! he 
would not have spoke such a word. 

\_Exeunt Orlando and Adam. 

OIL Is it even so ? begin you to grow upon me ? I will 
physic your rankness, 14 and yet give no thousand crowns 
neither. — Holla, Denis ! 

Enter Denis. 

Den. Calls your Worship ? 

OH. Was not Charles the Duke's wrestler here to speak 
with me? 

Den. So please you, he is here at the door, and impor- 
tunes access to you. 

OH. Call him in. [Exit Denis.] — 'Twill be a good way ; 
and to-morrow the wrestling is. 

Enter Charles. 

Cha. Good morrow to your Worship. 

OIL Good morrow, Monsieur Charles. What's the new 
news at the new Court? 

Cha. There's no news at the new Court, sir, but the old 
news : that is, the old Duke is banished by his younger 
brother the new Duke ; and three or four loving lords have 



14 Rankjiess is ovcrgroivtk^ or having too much blood in him. Oliver's 
thought is, that Orlando is growing too big for his station, and so needs to 
be taken down. The Poet repeatedly uses to physic for to lira I. 



34 AS YOU LIKE IT. 



ACT 



put themselves into voluntary exile with him, whose lands 
and revenues enrich the new Duke ; therefore he gives them 
good leave to wander. 

Oli. Can you tell if Rosalind, the old Duke's daughter, be 
banished with her father? 

Cha. O, no ; for the new Duke's daughter, her cousin, so 
loves her, — being ever from their cradles bred together, — 
that she would have followed her exile, or have died to 
stay I5 behind her. She is at the Court, and no less beloved 
of her uncle than his own daughter ; and never two ladies 
loved as they do. 

Oli. Where will the old Duke live ? 

Cha. They say, he is already in the Forest of Arden, 16 and 
a many merry men with him ; and there they live like the 
old Robin Hood 17 of England : they say, many young 
gentlemen flock to him every day, and fleet the time care- 
lessly, 18 as they did in the golden world. 19 

Oli. What, you wrestle to-morrow before the new Duke ? 

15 To stay is an instance of the infinitive used gerundively, or like the 
Latin gerund, and so is equivalent to by ox from staying. The usage is very 
frequent in Shakespeare, and sometimes makes his meaning obscure. See 
King Lear, page 117, note 18. 

10 Ardenne was a large forest in French Flanders, lying near the river 
Meuse, and between Charlemont and Rocroy. 

17 This prince of outlaws and " most gentle theefe " lived in the time of 
Richard I., and had his chief residence in Sherwood Forest, Nottingham- 
shire. Wordsworth aptly styles him " the English ballad-singer's joy " ; and 
in Percy's Reliques is an old ballad entitled Robin Hood and Guy ofGis- 
borne, showing how his praises were wont to be sung. His character and 
mode of life are well delivered in Scott's Ivanhoe. 

18 Carelessly is used elegantly here, in the sense of freedom from care. 

19 Of this fabled golden age, — an ancient and very general tradition 
wherein the state of man in Paradise appears to have been shadowed, — 
some notion is given in Gonzalo's Commonwealth. See The Tempest, 
page 83, note 25. 



scene 1. AS YOU LIKE IT. 35 

Cha. Marry, do I, sir ; and I came to acquaint you with 
a matter. I am given, sir, secretly to understand that your 
younger brother, Orlando, hath a disposition to come in dis- 
guised against me to try a fall. To-morrow, sir, I wrestle 
for my credit ; and he that escapes me without some broken 
limb shall 20 acquit him well. Your brother is but young 
and tender ; and, for your love, I would be loth to foil him, 
as I must, for my own honour, if he come in : therefore, out 
of my love to you, I came hither to acquaint you withal ; 
that either you might stay him from his intendment, or brook 
such disgrace well as he shall run into, in that it is a thing 
of his own search, and altogether against my will. 

Oli. Charles, I thank thee for thy love to me, which thou 
shalt find I will most kindly requite. I had myself notice of 
my brother's purpose herein, and have by underhand means 
laboured to dissuade him from it ; but he is resolute. I tell 
thee, Charles, it is the stubbornest young fellow of France ; 
full of ambition, an envious emulator of every man's good 
parts, a secret and villainous contriver against me his natural 
brother : therefore use thy discretion ; I had as lief thou 
didst break his neck as his finger. And thou wert best look 
to't; for if thou dost him any slight disgrace, or if he do 
not mightily grace himself on thee, 21 he will practise against 
thee by poison, entrap thee by some treacherous device, and 
never leave thee till he hath ta'en thy life by some indirect 
means or other ; for, I assure thee, and almost with tears I 
speak it, there is not one so young and so villainous this day 
living. I speak but brotherly of him ; ]put, should I anato- 



20 Shall for will. The two were often used indiscriminately. " Will have 
to do his best" is the meaning. Him for himself, of oourse. 

21 That is, "get himself honour or reputation at your expense." 



36 AS YOU LIKE IT. 



ACT i. 



mize 22 him to thee as he is, I must blush and weep, and 
thou must look pale and wonder. 

Cha. I am heartily glad I came hither to you. If he 
come to-morrow, I'll give him his payment: 23 if ever he go 
alone again, I'll never wrestle for prize more : and so, God 
keep your Worship ! 

OIL Farewell, good Charles. \Eocit Charles.] — Now 
will I stir this gamester : 24 I hope I shall see an end of him ; 
for my soul, yet I know not why, hates nothing more than 
he. Yet he's gentle ; never school'd, and yet learned ; full 
of noble device ; of all sorts enchantingly beloved ; and 
indeed so much in the heart of the world, and especially of 
my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether 
misprised. But it shall not be so long ; this wrestler shall 
clear all : nothing remains but that I kindle 25 the boy 
thither ; which now I'll go about. \_Exit. 



Scene II. — A Law?i before the Duke's Palace. 

Enter Rosalind and Celia. 

Cel. I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry. 
Ros. Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress 
of; and would you yet I were merrier? Unless you could 

22 To anatomize, as the word is here used, is to unfold, explain, or expose 
a thing thoroughly. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy is a capital instance 
in point. The same sense survives in the technical use of the word in Med- 
ical Science. 

23 Payment for punishment. The verb to pay is often so used. 

24 Gamester was used very much as our phrase sporting character, or of 
one sowing his wild oats. 

25 Spur him on. So in Macbeth : " That, trusted home, might yet enkindle 
you unto the crown." 



SCENE II. AS YOU LIKE IT. 37 

teach me to forget a banished father, you must not learn me 
how to remember any extraordinary pleasure. 

Ccl. Herein I see thou lovest me not with the full weight 
that I love thee. If my uncle, thy banished father, had ban- 
ished thy uncle, the Duke my father, so thou hadst been still 
with me, I could have taught my love to take thy father for 
mine : so wouldst thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so 
righteously temper' d as mine is to thee. 

Ros. Well, I will forget the condition of my estate, to re- 
joice in yours. 

Ccl. You know my father hath no child but I, 1 nor none 
is like to have : and, truly, when he dies, thou shalt be his 
heir ; for what he hath taken away from thy father perforce, 
I will render thee again in affection ; by mine honour, I will ; 
and when I break that oath, let me turn monster : therefore, 
my sweet Rose, my dear Rose, be merry. 

Ros. From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports. Let 
me see ; what think you of falling in love ? 

Ccl. Marry, I pr'ythee, do, to make sport withal : but love 
no man in good earnest ; nor no further in sport neither than 
with safety of a pure blush thou mayst in honour come off 
again. 

Ros. What shall be our sport, then ? 

Ccl. Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from 
her wheel, 2 that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally. 

Ros. I would we could do so ; for her benefits are might- 
ily misplaced ; and the bountiful blind woman doth most 
mistake in her gifts to women. 

1 In the unsettled grammar of Shakespeare's time, such a misplacing of 
the cases, as compared with present usage, was quite common even with 
the best-educated people. 

2 That is, drive her from it with gibes and flouts. 



/ 



38 AS YOU LIKE IT. act I 

Cel. Tis true ; for those that she makes fair, she scarce 
makes honest ; and those that she makes honest, she make's 
very ill-favoured. 

Ros. Nay, now thou goest from Fortune's office to Na- 
ture's : Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the linea- 
ments of Nature. 

Cel. No? when Nature hath made a fair creature, may 
she not by Fortune fall into the fire ? Though Nature hath 
given us wit to flout at Fortune, hath not Fortune sent in this 
Fool to cut off the argument ? 

Enter Touchstone. 

Ros. Indeed, then is Fortune too hard for Nature, when 
Fortune makes Nature's natural 3 the cutter-off of Nature's 
wit. 

Cel. Peradventure this is not Fortune's work neither, but 
Nature's ; who, perceiving our natural wits too dull to reason 
of such goddesses, hath sent this natural for our whetstone ; 
for always the dulness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits. 
— How now, wit ! whither wander you ? 

Touch. Mistress, you must come away to your father. 

Cel. Were you made the messenger? 

Touch. No, by mine honour ; but I was bid to come for 
you. 

Ros. Where learned you that oath, Fool? 

Touch. Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they 
were good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard 
was naught : 4 now I'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught, 

3 Natural was used, as it still is, like intiocent, for a veritable fool. The 
application oifool to the professional clown gave rise to many quibbles. 

4 Naught is simply bad, as in our word naughty. It must not be con- 
founded with nought. 



SCENE ii. AS YOU LIKE IT. 39 

and the mustard was good ; and yet was not the knight for- 
sworn. 

Cel. How prove you that, in the great heap of your knowl- 
edge? 

Ros. Ay, marry, now unmuzzle your wisdom. 

Touch. Stand you both forth now : stroke your chins, and 
swear by your beards that I am a knave. 

Cel. By our beards, if we had them, thou art. 

Touch. By my knavery, if I had it, then I were ; but, if 
you swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn : no more 
was this knight, swearing by his honour, for he never had 
any ; or, if he had, he had sworn it away before ever he saw 
those pancakes or that mustard. 

Cel. Pr'ythee, who is't that thou mean'st? 

Touch. One that old 5 Frederick, your father, loves. 

Cel. My father's love is enough to honour him enough : 
speak no more of him ; you'll be whipp'd for taxation 6 one 
of these days. 

Touch. The more pity, that Fools may not speak wisely 
what wise men do foolishly. 

Cel. By my troth, thou say'st true ; for since the little 
wit that Fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise 
men have makes a great show. — Here comes Monsieur Le 
Beau. 

Ros. With his mouth full of news. 

Cel. Which he will put on us, as pigeons feed their young. 

Ros. Then shall we be news-crammed. 

5 Old is here merely a term of familiarity, such as Fools were privileged 
to use to and of all sorts of people. 

6 It was the custom to whip Fools when they used their tongues too freely. 
Taxation is censure, satire. So in ii. 7, of this play : " Why, who cries out 
on pride, that can therein tax any private party? " 



40 AS YOU LIKE IT. act I. 

Cel. All the better ; we shall be the more marketable. — 
^ jr\ Enter Le Beau. 

Bon jour, Monsieur Le Beau : what's the news? 

Le Beau. Fair Princess, you have lost much good sport. 

Cel. Sport ! of what colour ? 7 

Le Beau. What colour, madam ! how shall I answer you? 

Ros. As wit and fortune will. 

Touch. Or as the Destinies decree. 

Cel. Well said : that was laid on with a trowel. 8 

Touch. Nay, if I keep not my rank, — 

Ros. Thou losest thy old smell. 

Le Beau. You amaze me, ladies : I would have told you 
of good wrestling, which you have lost the sight of. 

Ros. Yet tell us the manner of the wrestling. 

Le Beau. I will tell you the beginning ; and, if it please 
your ladyships, you may see the end ; for the best is yet to 
do ; and here, where you are, they are coming to perform it. 

Cel. Well, — the beginning, that is dead and buried. 

Le Beau. There comes an old man and his three sons, — 

Cel. I could match this beginning with an old tale. 

Le Beau. — three proper 9 young men, of excellent growth 
and presence, with bills on their necks ; 10 — 

7 Celia glances, apparently, at La Beau's affected or dandified pronun- 
ciation of sport, he having got it nearer to spot than to sport. 

8 This is a proverbial phrase, meaning to do any thing without delicacy, 
or to lay it on thick. If a man flatter grossly, it is common to say, he lays it 
on with a trowel. The Destinies shape the speech of those who have not 
sense enough to shape it for themselves. 

9 Proper is handsome ox fine-looking. Commonly so in Shakespeare. 

10 Bills were instruments or weapons used by watchmen and foresters. 
Watchmen were said to carry their bills or halberds on their necks, not on 
their shoulders. There is a quibble on the word bills, in the next speech, 
referring to public notices, which were generally headed with the words,— 
" Be it known unto all men by these presents." 



SCENE II. AS YOU LIKE IT. 41 

Ros. Be it known unto all men by these presents. 

Le Beau. — the eldest of the three wrestled with Charles, 
the Duke's wrestler ; which Charles in a moment threw him, 
and broke three of his ribs, that there is little hope of life in 
him : so he served the second, and so the third. Yonder 
they lie ; the poor old man, their father, making such pitiful 
dole over them, that all the beholders take his part with 
weeping. 

Ros. Alas ! 

Touch. But what is the sport, monsieur, that the ladies 
have lost? 

Le Beau. Why, this that I speak of. 

Touch. Thus men may grow wiser every day ! it is the 
first time that ever I heard breaking of ribs was sport for 
ladies. 

Cel. Or I, I promise thee. 

Ros. But is there any else longs to feel this broken 
music 11 in his sides? is there yet another dotes upon rib- 
breaking? — Shall we see this wrestling, cousin? 

Le Beau. You must, if you stay here ; for here is the 

11 What sort of music was meant by this phrase, has been much in doubt. 
Chappell, in his Popular Music of the Olden Time, says the phrase " means 
what we now term a string band." But he has since changed his opinion, 
and his later explanation, given to Mr. W. A. Wright, Editor of the " Clar- 
endon Press Series," is as follows: "Some instruments, such as viols, 
violins, flutes, &c, were formerly made in sets of four, which when played 
together formed a consort. If one or more of the instruments of one set 
were substituted for the corresponding ones of another set, the result was 
no longer a consort but broken music." The expression occurs in Henry V., 
v. 2 : " Come, your answer in broken music ; for thy voice is music, and thy 
English broken." And Bacon, Essay xxxvii. : " I understand it, that the 
Song be in Quire, placed aloft, and accompanied with some broken 
Musicke." — The implied comparison of broken ribs to broketi music appears 
to be but a whimsical fancy, with no link of connection but a verbal one 
suggested by broken. 



42 AS YOU LIKE IT. act I. 

place appointed for the wrestling, and they are ready to per- 
form it. 

Cel. Yonder, sure, they are coming : let us now stay and 
see it. 

Flourish. Enter Duke Frederick, Lords, Orlando, 
Charles, and Attendants. 

Duke F. Come on : since the youth will not be entreated, 
his own peril on his forwardness. 

Ros. Is yonder the man? 

Le Beau. Even he, madam. 

Cel. Alas, he is too young ! yet he looks successfully. 12 

Duke F. How now, daughter, and cousin ! ,3 are you 
crept hither to see the wrestling? 

Ros. Ay, my liege, so please you give us leave. 

Duke F. You will take little delight in it, I can tell you, 
there is such odds in the men. In pity of the challenger's 
youth, I would fain dissuade him, but he will not be en- 
treated. 14 Speak to him, ladies; see if you can move him. 

Cel. Call him hither, good Monsieur Le Beau. 

Duke F. Do so : I'll not be by. [The Duke goes apart. 

Le Beau. Monsieur the challenger, the Princesses call for 
you. 

Orl. I attend them with all respect and duty. 

Ros. Young man, have you challenged Charles the 
wrestler ? 

12 " Looks successful',' or as one likely to succeed. The Poet has repeated 
instances of adverbs thus used as adjectives, as also vice versa. 

13 Cousin was used indifferently of nephews, nieces, and grandchildren, 
as well as for what we mean by the term. Shakespeare is full of instances 
in point. Rosalind is niece to Frederick. 

14 This phrase has occurred just before, and of course means " will not 
yield to entreaty," or " will not be prevailed upon." 



SCENE II. AS YOU LIKE IT. 43 

Or/. No, fair Princess ; he is the general challenger : I 
come but in, as others do, to try with him the strength of my 
youth, 

Ce/. Young gentleman, your spirits are too bold for your 
years. You have seen cruel proof of this man's strength : if 
you saw yourself with our eyes, or knew yourself with our 
judgment, the fear of your adventure would counsel you to 
a more equal enterprise. We pray you, for your own sake, 
to embrace your own safety, and give over this attempt. 

Ros. Do, young sir ; your reputation shall not therefore 
be misprised : 15 we will make it our suit to the Duke that 
the wrestling might not go forward. 

Or/. I beseech you, punish me not with your hard 
thoughts. I confess me much guilty, to deny 16 so fair and 
excellent ladies any thing : but let your fair eyes and gentle 
wishes go with me to my trial ; wherein if I be foil'd, there 
is but one shamed that was never gracious ; 17 if kill'd, but 
one dead that is willing to be so. I shall do my friends no 
wrong, for I have none to lament me ; the world no injury, 
for in it I have nothing ; only in the world I fill up a place, 
which may be better supplied when I have made it empty. 

Ros. The little strength that I have, I would it were with you. 

Ce/. And mine, to eke out hers. 

Ros. Fare you well : pray Heaven I be deceived in you ! 

Ce/. Your heart's desires be with you ! 

Cha. Come, where is this young gallant that is so desir- 
ous to lie with his mother earth? 

15 Misprised is prised amiss, that is, undervalued. So, in the first scene, 
Oliver, muttering to himself of his brother's virtues and popularity, shows 
his envy by saying, " I am altogether misprised." 

16 To deny is another gerundial infinitive, and so is equivalent to in deny- 
ing. See page 34, note 15. 

17 Never in grace, or in favour ; never looked upon favourably. 



44 AS YOU LIKE IT. act I. 

OrL Ready, sir; but his will hath in it a more modest 
working. 

Duke F. You shall try but one fall. 

Cha. No, I warrant your Grace, you shall not entreat him to 
a second, that have so mightily persuaded him from a first. 

Oil. An you mean to mock me after, you should not 
have mock'd me before : but come your ways. 

Ros. Now Hercules be thy speed, young man ! 

Cel. I would I were invisible, to catch the strong fellow 
by the leg. [Charles and Orlando wrestle. 

Ros. O excellent young man ! 

Cel. If I had a thunderbolt in mine eye, I can tell who 
should down. [Charles is thrown. SJiout. 

Duke F. No more, no more. 

OrL Yes, I beseech your Grace : I am not yet well 
breathed. 18 

Duke F. How dost thou, Charles ? 

Le Beau. He cannot speak, my lord. 

Duke F. Bear him away. — [Charles is borne out. 

What is thy name, young man ? 

OrL Orlando, my liege ; the youngest son of Sir Roland 
de Bois. 

Duke F. I would thou hadst been son to some man else. 
The world esteem'd thy father honourable, 
But I did find him still mine enemy : 
Thou shouldst 19 have better pleased me with this deed, 



18 Well breathed is well exercised. Orlando means that he is not yet 
fairly warm with his work. The verb to breathe often occurs in this sense. 

19 Shouldst in the sense of wouldst. The auxiliaries could, should, and 
xoould in Shakespeare's time were used interchangeably, and he has many 
instances of such use. In Rosalind's second speech below, we have it again ■ 
" That could give more " ; could for would. 



SCENE II. AS YOU LIKE IT. 45 

Hadst thou descended from another House. 
But fare thee well ; thou art a gallant youth : 
I would thou hadst told me of another father. 

[Exeunt Duke Fred., Train, and Le Beau. 

Cel. Were I my father, coz, would I do this ? 

Orl. I am more proud to be Sir Roland's son, 
His youngest son ; and would not change that calling, 
To be adopted heir to Frederick. 

Ros. My father loved Sir Roland as his soul, 
And all the world was of my father's mind : 
Had I before known this young man his son, 
I should have given him tears unto entreaties, 20 
Ere he should thus have ventured. 

Cel. Gentle cousin, 

Let us go thank him and encourage him : 
My father's rough and envious 21 disposition 
Sticks me at heart. — Sir, you have well deserved : 
If you do keep your promises in love 
But justly, as you have exceeded promise, 
Your mistress shall be happy. 

Ros. Gentleman, 

[ Giving him a chain from her neck. 
Wear this for me, one out of suits 22 with fortune, 
That could give more, but that her hand lacks means. — 
Shall we go, coz ! 

Cel. Ay. — Fare you well, fair gentleman. 

Orl. Can I not say, I thank you ? My better parts 
Are all thrown down ; and that which here stands up 

20 Would have given him tears in addition to entreaties. 

21 In the Poet's time, envy and envious were generally used for malice and 
malicious. So in the English Bible. See The Merchant, page 150, note 42. 

22 Out of suits is out of favour ; thrown off or discarded by fortune. 



4-6 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT I. 

Is but a quintian, 23 a mere lifeless block. 

Ros. He calls us back : 24 my pride fell with my fortunes ; 
I'll ask him what he would. — Did you call, sir? 
Sir, you have wrestled well, and overthrown 
More than your enemies. 

Cel. Will you go, coz? 

Ros. Have with you. — Fare you well. 

[Exeunt Rosalind and Celia. 

Orl. What passion hangs these weights upon my tongue ? 
I cannot speak to her, yet she urged conference. 
O poor Orlando, thou art overthrown ! 
Or Charles or something weaker masters thee. 

Re-enter Le Beau. 

Le Beau. Good sir, I do in friendship counsel you 
To leave this place. Albeit you have deserved 
High commendation, true applause, and love, 
Yet such is now the Duke's condition, 25 
That he misconstrues all that you have done. 
The Duke is humorous : 26 what he is, indeed, 

23 A quintain was a figure set up for tilters to run at, in a mock tournament. 
The form was a post with a cross-bar fixed to the top, turning on a pivot 
having a broad board at one end, and a bag full of sand at the other. In the 
sport, if the figure were struck on the shield, the quintain turned on its pivot 
and hit the assailant with the sand bag. The skill consisted in striking the 
quintain dexterously so as to avoid the blow. Orlando is talking to himself 
in this speech, the ladies having withdrawn. 

24 Orlando has not called them back : why, then, does Rosalind say this ? 
Perhaps she wants to talk further with him. 

25 This word occurs very often in the sense of temper or disposition. So, 
in The Merchant, i. 2, Portia says of the Moorish Prince, who comes to woo 
her, " If he have the condition of a saint, and the complexion of a devil, I 
had rather he should shrive me than wive me." 

26 Humorous here is capricious, moody, crotchety, or going by fits and starts, 
A frequent usage. 



scene in. AS YOU LIKE IT. 47 

More suits you to conceive than I to speak of. 

Orl. I thank you, sir : and, pray you, tell me this, — 
Which of the two was daughter of the Duke, 
That here were at the wrestling? 

Le Beau. Neither his daughter, if we judge by manners ; 
But yet, indeed, the shorter is his daughter : 
Th' other is daughter to the banish'd Duke, 
And here detain'd by her usurping uncle, 
To keep his daughter company ; whose loves 
Are dearer than the natural bond of sisters. 
But I can tell you, that of late this Duke 
Hath ta'en displeasure 'gainst his gentle niece, 
Grounded upon no other argument 
But that the people praise her for her virtues, 
And pity her for her good father's sake ; 
And, on my life, his malice 'gainst the lady 
Will suddenly break forth. Sir, fare you well : 
Hereafter, in a better world than this, 27 
I shall desire more love and knowledge of you. 

Orl. I rest much bounden to you : fare you well. — 

\_Exil Le Beau. 
Thus must I from the smoke into the smother ; 28 
From tyrant duke unto a tyrant brother : — 
But heavenly Rosalind ! [Exit. 

Scene III. — A Room in the Palace. 

Enter Celia and Rosalind. 

Ccl. Why, cousin ; why, Rosalind ; — Cupid have mercy ! 
— not a word ? 

21 Probably meaning " in a better state of things than the present." 
28 That is, from bad to worse. A proverbial phrase, apparently. 



48 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT I. 

Ros. Not one to throw at a dog. 

Cel. No, thy words are too precious to be cast away upon 
curs ; throw some of them at me ; come, lame me with 
reasons. 

Ros. Then there were two cousins laid up ; when the one 
should be lamed with reasons, and the other mad without any. 

Cel. But is all this for your father? 

Ros. No, some of it is for my father's child. O, how full 
of briers is this working-day world ! 

Cel. They are but burs, cousin, thrown upon thee in 
holiday foolery : if we walk not in the trodden paths, our 
very petticoats will catch them. 

Ros. I could shake them off my coat : these burs are in 
my heart. 

Cel. Hem them away. 

Ros. I would try, if I could cry hem, and have him. 

Cel. Come, come, wrestle with thy affections. 

Ros. O, they take the part of a better wrestler than myself ! 

Cel. O, a good wish upon you ! you will try in time, in 
despite of a fall. 1 But, turning these jests out of service, let 
us talk in good earnest : Is it possible, on such a sudden, you 
should fall into so strong a liking with old Sir Roland's 
youngest son? 

Ros. The Duke my father loved his father dearly. 

Cel. Doth it therefore ensue that you should love his son 
dearly? By this kind of chase, I should hate him, for my 
father hated his father dearly ; 2 yet I hate not Orlando. 

1 A quibble is probably intended between falling in love and falling by 
a wrestler's hand. 

2 In Shakespeare's time, it was just as correct to speak of hating dearly 
as of loving dearly ; of a dear foe as of a dear friend. So in Hamlet, i. 2 : 
" Would I had met my dearest foe in Heaven, or ever I had seen that day." 



SCENE in. AS YOU LIKE IT. 49 

Ros. No, faith, hate him not, for my sake. 
Cel. Why should I not ? doth he not deserve well ? 3 
Ros. Let me love him for that ; and do you love him be- 
cause I do. Look, here comes the Duke. 
Cel. With his eyes full of anger. 

Enter Duke Frederick, with Lords. 

Duke F. Mistress, dispatch you with your safest haste, 
And get you from our Court. 

Ros. Me, uncle? 

Duke F. You, cousin : 

Within these ten days if that thou be'st found 
So near our public Court as twenty miles, 
Thou diest for it. 

Ros. I do beseech your Grace, 

Let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me : 
If with myself I hold intelligence, 
Or have acquaintance with mine own desires ; 
If that I do not dream, or be not frantic, — 
As I do trust I am not, — then, dear uncle, 
Never so much as in a thought unborn 
Did I offend your Highness. 

Duke F. Thus do all traitors : 

If their purgation 4 did consist in words, 
They are as innocent as grace itself: 
Let it suffice thee, that I trust thee not. 

Ros. Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor : 

3 Celia here speaks ironically, her meaning apparently being, " It was 
because your father deserved well that my father hated him ; and ought I 
not, by your reasoning, to hate Orlando for the same cause ? " 

4 Purgation is proof of innoce?ice ; clearing themselves of the matter 
charged. 



50 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT I. 

Tell me whereon the likelihood depends. 

Duke F. Thou art thy father's daughter ; there's enough. 

Ros. So was I when your Highness took his dukedom ; 
So was I when your Highness banish'd him : 
Treason is not inherited, my lord ; 
Or, if we did derive it from our friends, 
What's that to me ? my father was no traitor : 
Then, good my liege, mistake me not so much 
To think my poverty is treacherous. 

Cel. Dear sovereign, hear me speak. 

Duke F. Ay, Celia ; we stay'd her for your sake, 
Else had she with her father ranged along. 

Cel. I did not then entreat to have her stay ; 
It was your pleasure and your own remorse : 5 
I was too young that time to value her ; 
But now I know her : if she be a traitor, 
Why, so am I ; we still have slept together, 
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together ; 
And, wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans, 
Still we went coupled and inseparable. 

Duke F. She is too subtle for thee ; and her smoothness, 
Her very silence, and her patience, 
Speak to the people, and they pity her. 
Thou art a fool : she robs thee of thy name ; 
And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous 
When she is gone. Then open not thy lips : 
Firm and irrevocable is my doom 
Which I have pass'd upon her : she is banish'd. 

Cel. Pronounce that sentence, then, on me, my liege : 
I cannot live out of her company. 

5 Remorse, as usual, for pity or compassion. 



SCENE I. AS YOU LIKE IT. 5 1 

Duke F. You are a fool. — You, niece, provide yourself : 
If you outstay the time, upon mine honour, 
And in the greatness of my word, you die. 

[Exeunt Duke Frederick and Lords. 

Cel. O my poor Rosalind ! whither wilt thou go ? 
Wilt thou change fathers ? I will give thee mine. 
I charge thee, be not thou more grieved than I am. 

Ros. I have more cause. 

CeL Thou hast not, cousin. 

Pr'ythee, be cheerful : know'st thou not, the Duke 
Hath banished me, his daughter? 

Ros. That he hath not. 

CeL No ? hath not ? Rosalind lacks, then, the love 
Which teacheth me that thou and I are one : 
Shall we be sunder'd ? shall we part, sweet girl ? 
No ; let my father seek another heir. 
Therefore devise with me how we may fly, 
Whither to go, and what to bear with us : 
And do not seek to take the charge upon you, 
To bear your griefs yourself, and leave me out ; 
For, by this heaven, now at our sorrows pale, 
Say what thou canst, I'll go along with thee. 

Ros. Why, whither shall we go ? 

CeL To seek my uncle in the Forest of Arden. 

Ros. Alas, what danger will it be to us, 
Maids as we are, to travel forth so far ! 
Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold. 

CeL I'll put myself in poor and mean attire, 
And with a kind of umber 6 smirch my face ; 
The like do you : so shall we pass along, 

6 Umber was a dusky, yellow-coloured earth, from Umbria in Italy. 



52 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT II. 

And never stir assailants. 

Ros. Were't not better, 

Because that I am more than common tall, 
That I did suit me all points like a man ? 
A gallant curtle-axe 7 upon my thigh, 
A boar-spear in my hand ; and — in my heart 
Lie there what hidden woman's fear there will 8 — 
We'll have a swashing 9 and a martial outside ; 
As many other mannish cowards have 
That do outface it with their semblances. 

CeL What shall I call thee when thou art a man ? 

Ros. I'll have no worse a name than Jove's own page ; 
And therefore look you call me Ganymede. 
But what will you be call'd? 

CeL Something that hath a reference to my state ; 
No longer Celia, but Aliena. 

Ros. But, cousin, what if we assay'd to steal 
The clownish Fool out of your father's Court ? 
Would he not be a comfort to our travel ? 

CeL He'll go along o'er the wide world with me ; 
Leave me alone to woo him. Let's away, 
And get our jewels and our wealth together ; 
Devise the fittest time and safest way 
To hide us from pursuit that will be made 
After my flight. Now go we in content, 
To liberty, and not to banishment. [Exeunt 

7 This was one of the old words for a cutlass, or short, crooked sword. 
It was variously spelt, courtlas, courtlax, curtlax. 

8 That is, " Whatever hidden woman's fear lies in my heart." 

9 Sivaskmg is dashing, swaggering. So in Fuller's Worthies of England : 
" A ruffian is the same with a swaggerer, so called, because endeavouring to 
make that side swag or weigh down, whereon he engageth. The same also 
with swash-b7tckler t from swashing or making a noise on bucklers." 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 



53 



ACT II. 




Scene I. — The Forest of Arden. 

Enter Duke Senior, Amiens, and other Lords, in the dress of 
Foresters. 



Duke S. Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile, 
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet 
Than that of painted pomp ? Are not these woods 
More free from peril than the envious Court? 
Here feel we not the penalty of Adam. 1 
The seasons' difference, and the icy fang 
And churlish chiding of the Winter's wind, — 
Which when it 2 bites and blows upon my body, 
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say, 
This is no flattery, — these are counsellors 
That feelingly persuade me what I am. 
Sweet are the uses of adversity ; 
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, 
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head : 3 



1 The curse, ox penalty, denounced upon Adam was, " In the sweat of thy 
face shalt thou eat bread." This is what the Duke and his co-mates do not 
feel : " they fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world." The 
Duke then goes on, consistently, to say what they do feel. 

2 The using of both the relative and the personal pronouns, in relative 
clauses, as which and /"/ in this passage, was not uncommon with the best 
writers. See The Merchant, page ioo, note 23. 

3 The real toadstone, as known to the ancients, was apparently so called 
from its resemblance to the toad or frog in colour. Pliny says, (trans. Hol- 
land,) " The same Coptos sendeth other stones unto us besides, to wit, those 
which be called Batrachitse ; the one like in colour to a frog, a second unto 



54 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT II. 

And this our life, exempt from public haunt, 
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing : 
I would not change it. 

Ami. Happy is your Grace, 

That can translate the stubbornness of fortune 
Into so quiet and so sweet a style. 

Duke S. Come, shall we go and kill us venison? 
And yet it irks me, 4 the poor dappled fools, 
Being native burghers of this desert city, 
Should, in their own confines, with forked heads, 5 
Have their round haunches gored. 

i Lord. Indeed, my lord, 

The melancholy Jaques grieves at that ; 

ivory, the third is of a blackish red." Besides this slight reference to the 
Batrachites, says Mr. King in his Natural History of Gems and Decorative 
Stones, " No further notice of this stone can be traced in the other writers 
of antiquity. But this singular epithet, primarily intended only to denote 
the peculiar colour of the stone, furnished later times with the foundation 
for a most marvellous fable, which long obtained, as the number of exam- 
ples still preserved attest, universal credit throughout Europe. Understand- 
ing the ancient term as implying the natural production of the animal 
according to the analogy of other similar names, as the Saurites, Echites, 
&c, doctors taught that the ' toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious 
jewel in his head.' " — William Aldis Wright. 

4 The verb to irk is now seldom used, but its sense in the adjective irk- 
some is common. To irk is to grieve, vex, or annoy. 

5 Some question has been made as to what these were. Roger Ascham, 
in his Toxophilus, appears to settle the matter ; describing two kinds of 
arrow-heads as follows : "The one having two points or barbs, looking 
backward to the steel and feathers, which surely we call in English a broad 
arrow-head or a swallow-tail ; the other having two points stretching for- 
ward, and this Englishmen do call a forkhead." And again : " Commodus 
the Emperor used forked heads, whose fashion Herodian doth lively and 
naturally describe, saying that they were like the shape of a new moon, 
wherewith he would smite off the head of a bird, and never miss." 



SCENE I. 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 55 



'= 



I 



And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp 
Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you. 
To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself 
Did steal behind him, as he lay along 
Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out 
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood : 
To the which place a poor sequester'd stag, 
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt, 
Did come to languish ; and, indeed, my lord, 
The wretched animal heaved forth such groans, 
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat 
Almost to bursting ; and the big round tears 
Coursed one another down his innocent nose 
In piteous chase : and thus the hairy fool, 
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques, 
Stood on th' extremest verge of the swift brook, 
Augmenting it with tears. 6 

Duke S. But what said Jaques ? 

Did he not moralize this spectacle ? 

i Lord. O, yes, into a thousand similes. 
First, for his weeping into th' needless 7 stream ; 
Poor deer, quoth he, thou makest a testament 
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more 
To that which hath too much : then, being alone, 
Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends ; 

6 Drayton in the thirteenth song of his Poly- Olbion has a fine description 
of a deer-hunt, which he winds up thus : 

He who the mourner is to his own dying corse, 
Upon the ruthless earth his precious tears lets fall. 

And in a note upon the passage he adds, " The hart weepeth at his dying : 
his tears are held precious in medicine." 

7 Needless for not needing. Shakespeare abounds in similar language. 



$6 AS YOU LIKE IT. 



ACT II. 



'Tis right, quoth he ; thus misery doth part 
The flux of company : anon, a careless herd, 
Full of the pasture, jumps along by him, 
And never stays to greet him : Ay, quoth Jaques, 
Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens ; 
'Tis just the fashion : wherefore do you look 
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there ? 
Thus most invectively he pierceth through 
The body of the country, city, Court, 
Yea, and of this our life ; swearing that we 
Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what's 8 worse, 
To fright the animals, and to kill them up, 9 
In their assign'd and native dwelling-place. 

Duke S. And did you leave him in this contemplation ? 

2 Lord. We did, my lord, weeping and commenting 
Upon the sobbing deer. 

Duke S. Show me the place : 

I love to cope him in these sullen fits, 
For then he's full of matter. 

I Lord. I'll bring you to him straight. [Exeunt. 

Scene II. — A Room in the Palace. 
Enter Duke Frederick, Lords, and Attendants. 

Duke F. Can it be possible that no man saw them ? 
It cannot be : some villains of my Court 
Are of consent and sufferance in this. 

i Lord. I cannot hear of any that did see her. 
The ladies, her attendants of her chamber, 

8 What for the indefinite pronoun whatever. A frequent usage. 
" Kill them up " is old language for " kill them off" or kill them. 



SCENE in. AS YOU LIKE IT. 57 

Saw her a-bed ; and, in the morning early, 

They found the bed untreasured of their mistress. 

2 Lord. My lord, the roynish ' clown, at whom so oft 
Your Grace was wont to laugh, is also missing. 
Hesperia, the Princess' gentlewoman, 
Confesses that she secretly o'erheard 
Your daughter and her cousin much commend 
The parts and graces of the wrestler 
That did but lately foil the sinewy Charles \ 
And she believes, wherever they are gone, 
That youth is surely in their company. 

Duke F. Send to his brother's ; fetch that gallant hither : 
If he be absent, bring his brother to me ; 
I'll make him find him : do this suddenly ; 
And let not search and inquisition quail 2 
To bring again these foolish runaways. [Exeunt 



Scene III. — Before Oliver's House. 
Enter Orlando and Adam, meeting. 

Orl. Who's there ? 

Adam. What, my young master? O my gentle master ! 
O my sweet master ! O you memory 3 
Of old Sir Roland ! why, what make you here ? 4 

1 Roynish properly means ?nangy or scurvy. From the French ronger, to 
knaw, eat, or corrode. Used here as a general term of reproach. 

2 To quail is to grow faint, to slacken, give over. — Inquisition is inquiry, 
investigation. 

3 Memory for memorial or remembrancer. A frequent usage. So in the 
Communion Service of the Episcopal Church : "A perpetual memory of that 
his precious death," &c. 

4 " What are you doing here ? " See page 31, note 6. 



58 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

Why are you virtuous ? why do people love you ? 

And wherefore are you gentle, strong, and valiant? 

Why would you be so fond to overcome 

The bony priser of the humorous Duke ? 5 

Your praise is come too swiftly home before you. 

Know you not, master, to some kind of men 

Their graces serve them but as enemies ? 

No more do yours : your virtues, gentle master, 

Are sanctified and holy traitors to you. 6 

O, what a world is this, when what is comely 

Envenoms him that bears it ! 

Orl. Why, what's the matter? 

Adam. O unhappy youth, 

Come not within these doors ! within this roof 7 
The enemy of all your graces lives : 
Your brother — (no, no brother ; yet the son — 
Yet not the son — I will not call him son 
Of him I was about to call his father) — 
Hath heard your praises ; and this night he means 
To burn the lodging where you use to lie, 
And you within it : if he fail of that, 
He will have other means to cut you off: 
I overheard him and his practices. 



5 " Why would you be so foolish as to overcome ? " Such was the more 
common meaning of fond in the Poet's time. And he often omits as in such 
cases. — Priser is prize-fighter, or contender for prizes. Here, as before, 
humorous has the sense of moody or capricious. See page 46, note 26. 

6 The Poet is fond of thus mixing incongruous words, in order to express 
certain complexities of thought. In like sort, even so grave a writer as Rich- 
ard Hooker has the expression heavenly fraud, in a thoroughly good sense. 
— Envenoms, second line after, means poisons ; not that which makes a man 
venomous, but that which acts like venom upon him. 

7 Koofiox house ; the common figure of putting a part for the whole. 



scene hi. AS YOU LIKE IT. 59 

This is no place ; 8 this house is but a butchery : 
Abhor it, fear it, do not enter it. 

Or/. Why, whither, Adam, wouldst thou have me go? 

Adam. No matter whither, so you come not here. 

Or/. What, wouldst thou have me go and beg my food ? 
Or with a base and boisterous sword enforce 
A thievish living on the common road? 
This I must do, or know not what to do : 
Yet this I will not do, do how I can ; 
I rather will subject me to the malice 
Of a diverted blood 9 and bloody brother. 

Adam. But do not so. I have five hundred crowns, 
The thrifty hire I saved under your father, 
Which I did store, to be my foster-nurse 
When service should in my old limbs lie lame, 
And unregarded age in corners thrown : 
Take that ; and He that doth the ravens feed, 
Yea, providently caters for the sparrow, 
Be comfort to my age ! Here is the gold ; 
All this I give you. Let me be your servant : 
Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty j 
For in my youth I never did apply 
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood ; 
Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo 
The means of weakness and debility : 
Therefore my age is as a lusty Winter, 
Frosty, but kindly. 10 Let me go with you ; 

8 Place here means residence or home ; sometimes used so still. — Prac- 
tices, line before, is plottings, treacherous devices. 

9 Blood turned out of its natural course. Blood here stands for affection. 

10 Kindly in the sense of natural, and therefore healthy. See Much Ado, 
page 92, note 2. 



60 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT II. 

I'll do the service of a younger man 
In all your business and necessities. 

Or/. O good old man, how well in thee appears 
The constant service of the antique world, 
When service swet for duty, not for meed ! 
Thou art not for the fashion of these times, 
Where none will sweat but for promotion ; 
And, having that, do choke their service up 
Even with the having : u 'tis not so with thee. 
But, poor old man, thou prunest a rotten tree, 
That cannot so much as a blossom yield 
In lieu of 12 all thy pains and husbandry. 
But come thy ways ; we'll go along together ; 
And, ere we have thy youthful wages spent, 
We'll light upon some settled low content. 

Adam. Master, go on, and I will follow thee, 
To the last gasp, with truth and loyalty. — 
From seventeen years till now almost fourscore 
Here lived I, but now live here no more. 
At seventeen years many their fortunes seek ; 
But at fourscore it is too late a week : 13 
Yet fortune cannot recompense me better 
Than to die well, and not my master's debtor. \_Exeunt 

n Because their promotion makes them too proud to serve. 

12 In return for ; as always in Shakespeare. 

13 a week put for an indefinite period. 



SCENE IV. AS YOU LIKE IT. 



6l 



Scene IV. — The Forest of Arden. 

Enter Rosalind in Boy's clothes, Celia drest like a Shep- 
herdess, and Touchstone. 

Ros. O Jupiter, how weary are my spirits ! 

Touch. I care not for my spirits, if my legs were not 
weary. 

Ros. I could find in my heart to disgrace my man's ap- 
parel, and to cry like a woman ; but I must comfort the weaker 
vessel, as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to 
petticoat : therefore, courage ! good Aliena. 

Cel. I pray you, bear with me ; I can go no further. 

Touch. For my part, I had rather bear with you than 
bear you : yet I should bear no cross, 1 if I did bear you ; for 
I think you have no money in your purse. 

Ros. Well, this is the Forest of Arden. 

Touch. Ay, now am I in Arden ; the more fool I : when 
I was at home, I was in a better place ; but travellers must 
be content. 

Ros. Ay, be so, good Touchstone. Look you, who comes 

here ; 
A young man and an old in solemn 2 talk. 
Enter Corin a?id Silvius. 
Cor. That is the way to make her scorn you still. 
Sil. O Corin, that thou knew'st how I do love her. 
Cor. I partly guess ; for I have loved ere now. 

i In Shakespeare's time certain English coins had a cross stamped on 
one side, and hence were called crosses. This gave occasion for frequent 
puns. So Scott, in Woodstock, chap, hi.: "No devil so frightful as that 
which dances in the pocket where there is no cross to keep him out." 

= In old language, solemn is often used in the sense of serious or earnest. 



62 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT II. 

Sil. No, Corin, being old, thou canst not guess ; 
Though in thy youth thou wast as true a lover 
As ever sigh'd upon a midnight pillow : 
But if thy love were ever like to mine, — 
As sure I think did never man love so, — 
How many actions most ridiculous 
Hast thou been drawn to by thy fantasy? 

Cor. Into a thousand that I have forgotten. 

Sil. O, thou didst then ne'er love so heartily ! 
If thou remember'st not the slightest folly 
That ever love did make thee run into, 
Thou hast not loved : 
Or if thou hast not sat as I do now, 
Wearying thy hearer in thy mistress' praise, 
Thou hast not loved : 
Or if thou hast not broke from company 
Abruptly, as my passion now makes me, 
Thou hast not loved. — O Phebe, Phebe, Phebe ! [Exit. 

Ros. Alas, poor shepherd ! searching of thy wound, 
I have by hard adventure found mine own. 

Touch. And I mine. I remember, when I was in love I 
broke my sword upon a stone, and bid him 3 take that for 
coming a-night to Jane Smile : and I remember the kissing 
of her batlet, 4 and the cow's dugs that her pretty chapp'd 
hands had milk'd : and I remember the wooing of a peascod 5 
instead of her ; from whom I took two cods, and, giving her 
them again, said with weeping tears, Wear these for my sake. 

3 The imaginary rival for whose visits to Jane the stone was held vicari- 
ously responsible. 

4 An instrument with which washers beat clothes. 

5 That is, from the peascod as representing his mistress. Cod was for- 
merly used for the shell of peas, what we now call the pod. Pea-pods seem 
to have been worn sometimes for ornament. 



scene iv. AS YOU LIKE IT. 63 

We that are true lovers run into strange capers ; but as all is 
mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal 6 in folly. 

Ros. Thou speak'st wiser than thou art 'ware of. 

Touch. Nay, I shall ne'er be 'ware of mine own wit till I 
break my shins against it. 

Ros. Jove, Jove ! this shepherd's passion 
Is much upon my fashion. 

Touch. And mine ; but it grows something stale with 
me. 

Cel. I pray you, one of you question yond man, 
If he for gold will give us any food : 
I faint almost to death. 

Touch. Holla, you clown ! 

Ros. Peace, Fool : he's not thy kinsman. 

Cor. Who calls ? 

Touch. Your betters, sir. 

Cor. Else are they very wretched. 

Ros. Peace, I say. — Good even to you, friend. 

Cor. And to you, gentle sir, and to you all. 

Ros. I pr'ythee, shepherd, if that love or gold 
Can in this desert 7 place buy entertainment, 
Bring us where we may rest ourselves and feed : 
Here's a young maid with travel much oppress'd, 
And faints for succour. 

Cor. Fair sir, I pity her, 

And wish, for her sake more than for mine own, 
My fortunes were more able to relieve her ; 
But I am shepherd to another man, 

c Mortal is said to be used in the Craven dialect as a general intensive, 
or with the sense of excessive. So I have often heard such phrases as " mor- 
tal great " and " mortal tall." 

7 Desert was used of any wild or uninhabited place. 



64 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT II. 

And do not shear the fleeces that I graze : 

My master is of churlish disposition, 

And little recks 8 to find the way to Heaven 

By doing deeds of hospitality : 

Besides, his cote, 9 his flocks, and bounds of feed, 

Are now on sale ; and at our sheepcote now, 

By reason of his absence, there is nothing 

That you will feed on ; but what is, come see, 

And in my voice 10 most welcome shall you be. 

Ros. What is he that shall buy his flock and pasture? 

Cor. That young swain that you saw here but erewhile, 
That little cares for buying any thing. 

Ros. I pray thee, if it stand with honesty, 
Buy thou the cottage, pasture, and the flock, 
And thou shalt have to pay for it of us. 

Cel. And we will mend thy wages. I like this place, 
And willingly could waste 1 1 my time in it. 

Cor. Assuredly the thing is to be sold : 
Go with me : if you like, upon report, 
The soil, the profit, and this kind of life, 
I will your very faithful factor be, 
And buy it with your gold right suddenly. \_Exeunt. 

8 Little cares. The sense of reck appears in our word reckless. 

9 That is, cot or cottage ; the word is still used in its compound form, as 
sheepcote in the next line. 

10 "As far as my voice has the power to bid you welcome." 

11 Waste for pass or spend. See The Merchant, page 154, note 3. 



SCENE V. AS YOU LIKE IT. •> 

Scene V. — Another Part of the Forest. 

Enter Amiens, Jaques, and others. 

Song. 

Ami. Under the greenwood tree 
Who loves to lie with me, 
And tune his merry note 
Unto the sweet bird 1 s throat, 
Conie hither, come hither, come hither: 

Here shall he see no enemy 
But Winter and rough weather. 

Jaq. More, more, I pr'ythee, more. 

Ami. It will make you melancholy, Monsieur Jaques. 

Jaq. I thank it. More, I pr'ythee, more. I can suck 
melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs. More, I 
pr'ythee, more. 

Ami. My voice is ragged : I know I cannot please you. 

Jaq. I do not desire you to please me ; I do desire you 
to sing. Come, more ; another stanza : call you 'em stanzas ? 

Ami. What you will, Monsieur Jaques. 

Jaq. Nay, I care not for their names ; they owe me 
nothing. 1 Will you sing? 

Ami. More at your request than to please myself. 

Jaq. W T ell, then, if ever I thank any man, I'll thank you : 
but that they call compliment is like the encounter of two 
dog-apes ; 2 and when a man thanks me heartily, methinks I 

1 In Latin, nomina facer e means to enter an account, because not only the 
sums, but the names of the parties, are entered. Cicero uses nomina facere 
for to lend money, and nomen solvere for to pay a debt ; and in Livy we 
have nomen transcribere in alium for to transfer a debt to another. 

2 Dog-apes are dog-faced baboons. 



f AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT II. 

have given him a penny, and he renders me the beggarly 
thanks. Come, sing ; and you that will not, hold your tongues. 

Ami. Well, I'll end the song. — Sirs, cover 3 the while; 
the Duke will drink under this tree. — He hath been all this 
day to look you. 4 

Jaq. And I have been all this day to avoid him. He is 
too disputable 5 for my company : I think of as many matters 
as he ; but I give Heaven thanks, and make no boast of 
them. Come, warble, come. 

Song. 

All. WJio doth ambition shun, 

And loves to live i' the sun, 

Seeking the food he eats, 

And pleased with what lie gets, 
Come hither, come hi the?-, come hither : 

Here shall he see no enemy 
But Winter and rough weather. 

Jaq. I'll give you a verse to this note, that I made yester- 
day in despite of my invention. 

3 Cover refers to the forthcoming banquet, and seems to be an order for 
setting out and preparing the table. Accordingly, at the close of the scene, 
we have " his banquet is prepared." See The Merchant, page 159, note 5. 

4 The Poet repeatedly uses look thus as a transitive verb ; equivalent to 
look for. So in the The Merry Wives, iv. 2: "Mistress Page, I will look 
some linen for your head." 

5 Disputable for disputatious ; according to the indifferent use of active 
and passive forms then so common. See Much Ado, page 63, note 11. 

6 Note is here put for tiaie. — "In despite of my invention" probably 
means " in despite of my lack of invention." Such elliptical expressions are 
not uncommon in Shakespeare. So in iii. 2, of this play : " He that hath 
learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of good breeding " ; which 
evidently means " may complain of zaaut of good breeding." 



scene vi. AS YOU LIKE IT. 6j 

Ami. And I'll sing it. 
Jaq. Thus it goes : 

If it do come to pass 
That any man turn ass, 
Leaving his wealth and ease 
A stubborn will to please, 
Ducadme, ducadme, ducadme : 7 

Here shall he see gross fools as he, 
An if he will come to me. 

Ami. What's that ducadme ? 

Jaq. Tis a Greek invocation, 8 to call fools into a circle. 
I'll go sleep, if I can ; if I cannot, I'll rail against all the 
first-born of Egypt. 9 

Ami. And I'll go seek the Duke : his banquet is prepar'd. 

[Exeunt severally. 

Scene VI. — Another Part of the Forest. 
E?iter Orlando and Adam. 

Adam. Dear master, I can go no further : O, I die for 
food ! Here lie I down, and measure out my grave. Fare- 
well, kind master. 

Orl. Why, how now, Adam ! no greater heart in thee ? 
Live a little ; comfort a little ; cheer thyself a little. If this 
uncouth ] forest yield any thing savage, I will either be food 

7 Ducadme is three Latin words, due ad me, compressed into one, and 
means bring him to me. 

8 The invocation is Latin, not Greek. Of course the Poet knew this. 
Perhaps Mr. White explains it rightly : " That the cynical Jaques should 
pass off his Latin for Greek upon Amiens, is but in character." 

9 A proverbial expression for high-born persons. 

1 Uncouth properly means unknown ; hence strange, wild, or savage. 



58 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT II. 

for it, or bring it for food to thee. Thy conceit 9 is nearer 
death than thy powers. For my sake be comfortable ; 3 hold 
death awhile at the arm's end : I will be here with thee 
presently ; and if I bring thee not something to eat, I will 
give thee leave to die : but if thou diest before I come, thou 
art a mocker of my labour. Well said ! 4 thou look'st cheer- 
ly; and I'll be with thee quickly. — Yet thou liest in the 
bleak air : come, I will bear thee to some shelter ; and thou 
shalt not die for lack of a dinner, if there live any thing in 
this desert. Cheerly, good Adam ! [Exeunt. 



Scene VII. — TJie Same as in Scene V. 
A Table set out. Enter Duke Senior, Amiens, and others. 

Duke S. I think he be transform'd into a beast ; 
For I can nowhere find him like a man. 

/ Lord. My lord, he is but even now gone hence : 
Here was he merry, hearing of a song. 

Duke S. If he, compact of jars, 1 grow musical, 
We shall have shortly discord in the spheres. 2 
Go, seek him ; tell him I would speak with him. 

i Lord. He saves my labour by his own approach. 

Enter Jaques. 
Duke S. Why, how now, monsieur ! what a life is this, 



2 Conceit, as usual, for conception, thought, or apprehension. 

3 Be comfortable for be comforted, or take comfort. The Poet has many 
like instances of the endings -able and -ed used indiscriminately. 

4 Well said was a common colloquial phrase for well done. 

i Composed or made up of discords. See A Midsummer, page 96, note 2. 
2 If things are going so contrary to their natural order, the music of the 
spheres will soon be untuned. See The Merchant, page 185, note 11. 



SCENE VII. AS YOU LIKE IT. 69 

That your poor friends must woo your company ! 
What, you look merrily ! 

Jaq. A Fool, a Fool ! — I met a Fool i' the forest, 
A motley Fool ; 3 — a miserable world ! — 
As I do live by food, I met a Fool ; 
Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun, 
And rail'd on Lady Fortune in good terms, 
In good set terms, — and yet a motley Fool. 
Good morrow, Fool, quoth I. No, sir, quoth he, 
Call me not fool till Heaven hath sent me fortune* 
And then he drew a dial from his poke, 5 
And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye, 
Says very wisely, It is ten o'clock : 
Thus we may see, quoth he, how the world wags : 
'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine ; 
And after one hour more 'twill be eleven ; 
And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, 
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot ; 
And thereby hangs a tale. When I did hear 
The motley Fool thus moral on the time, 
My lungs began to crow like chanticleer, 
That Fools should be so deep-contemplative ; 
And I did laugh sans intermission 
An hour by his dial. — O noble Fool ! 
A worthy Fool ! — Motley's the only wear. 

3 So called because the professional Fool wore a patch-work or parti- 
coloured dress. The old sense of motley still lives in mottled. 

4 " It will be time enough to call me fool, when I shall have got rich." 
So in Ray's Collection of English Proverbs : " Fortune favours fools, or fools 
have the best luck." And Ben Jonson in the Prologue to The Alchemist: 
" Fortune, that favours fools, these two short hours we wish away." 

5 Poke is pocket or pouch. — The Poet repeatedly uses dial for what we 
call a watch, as here ; also sometimes for clock. 



70 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT il 

Duke S. What Fool is this ? 

Jag. O worthy Fool ! — One that hath been a courtier ; 
And says, if ladies be but young and fair, 
They have the gift to know't : and in his brain, — 
Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit 6 
After a voyage, — he hath strange places cramm'd 
With observation, the which he vents 
In mangled forms. — O, that I were a Fool ! 
I am ambitious for a motley coat. 

Duke S. Thou shalt have one. 

Jctq. It is my only suit ; 7 

Provided that you weed your better judgments 
Of all opinion that grows rank in them 
That I am wise. I must have liberty 
Withal, as large a charter as the wind, 8 
To blow on whom I please ; for so Fools have : 
And they that are most galled with my folly, 
They most must laugh. And why, sir, must they so? 
The why is plain as way to parish church : 
He that a Fool doth very wisely hit 

6 So Ben Jonson in the Induction to Every Man out of his Humour: 
" And now and then breaks a dry biscuit jest, which, that it may more easily 
be chew'd, he steeps in his own laughter." And Batman upon Bartholome 
has the following, quoted by Mr. Wright : " Good disposition of the brain 
and evil is known by his deeds, for if the substance of the brain be soft, thin, 
and clear, it receiveth lightly the feeling and printing of shapes, and likenesses 
of things. He that hath such a brain is swift, and good of perseverance and 
teaching. When it is contrary, the brain is not soft : he that hath such a 
brain receiveth slowly the feeling and printing of things : but nevertheless, 
when he hath taken and received them, he keepeth them long in mind. 
And that is sign and token of dryness," &c. 

7 A quibble, of course, between petition and dress. 

8 " The wind bloweth where it listeth." Charter was often used for 
liberty; perhaps from the effect of Magna Charta in guarding English 
freedom. 




SCENE VII. AS YOU LIKE IT. *J\ 

Doth very foolishly, although he smart, 

Not to seem senseless of the bob : 9 if not, 

The wise man's folly is anatomized 

Even by the squandering glances 10 of the Fool. „ 

Invest me in my motley ; give me leave 

To speak my mind, and I will through and through 

Cleanse the foul body of th' infected world, 

If they will patiently receive my medicine. 

Duke S. Fie on thee ! I can tell what thou wouldst 
do. 

Jaq. What, for a counter, 11 would I do but good? 

Duke S. Most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin : 
For thou thyself hast been a libertine ; 
And all th' embossed l2 sores and headed evils, 
That thou with license of free foot hast caught, 
Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world. 

Jaq. Why, who cries out on pride, 
That can therein tax any private party ? 
Doth it not flow as hugely as the sea, 
Till that the wearer's very means do ebb ? 
What woman in the city do I name, 
When that I say, the city-woman bears 
The cost of princes on unworthy shoulders ? 
Who can come in, and say that I mean her, 
When such a one as she, such is her neighbour? 

9 Bob is blow, thrust, or hit. 

10 Squandering glances are random or scattering thrusts or shots. See 
The Merchant, page 95, note 4. 

11 About the time when this play was written, the French counters, pieces 
of false money used in reckoning, were brought into use in England. 

12 Embossed 'is protuberant, or come to a head, like boils and carbuncles. 
So, in King Lear, ii. 4 : " Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed car- 
buncle." The protuberant part of a shield was called the boss. 



J2 AS YOU LIKE IT. 



ACT II 



Or what is he of basest function, 13 

That says his bravery 14 is not on my cost — 

Thinking that I mean him — but therein suits 

His folly to the mettle of my speech ? 

Where then ? how then ? what then ? let's see wherein 

My tongue hath wrong'd him : if it do him right, 

Then he hath wrong'd himself ; if he be free, 

Why, then my taxing like a wild-goose flies, 

Unclaim'd of any man. — But who comes here ? 

Enter Orlando with his sword drawn. 

Orl. Forbear, and eat no more ! 

Jaq. Why, I have eat none yet. 

Orl. Nor shalt not, till necessity be served. 

Jaq. Of what kind should this cock come of? 15 

Duke S. Art thou thus bolden'd, man, by thy distress, 
Or else a rude despiser of good manners, 
That in civility thou seem'st so empty? 

Orl. You touch'd my vein at first : the thorny point 
Of bare distress hath ta'en from me the show 
Of smooth civility : yet am I inland bred, 
And know some nurture. 16 But forbear, I say : 

13 Of lowest or meanest calling or occupation ; that is, a tailor, or one 
whose " soul is his clothes." 

14 Bravery is fine showy dress or equipage. 

15 This doubling of the preposition was not uncommon in the Poet's time. 
He has many instances of it. Thus, a little later in this play : " The scene 
where*'« we play in." So, too, in Coriolanus, ii. i : "In what enormity is 
Marcius poor in ? " And in Romeo and Juliet, Act i., Chorus : " That fair 
for which love groan'd /£?/-." 

16 Nurture is education, culture, good-breeding. So in Prospero's de- 
scription of Caliban : " A devil, a born devil, on whose nature nurture can 
never stick." — Inland, the commentators say, is here opposed to upland, 
which meant rude, unbred. I am apt to think the use of the word grew 
from the fact, that up to the Poet's time all the main springs of culture and 
civility in England were literally inland, remote from the sea. 




SCENE VII. AS YOU LIKE IT. J$ 

Alle dies that touches any of this fruit 
lTill I and my affairs are answered. 

Jaq. An you will not be answer'd with reason, I must die. 

Duke S. What would you have ? Your gentleness shall 
force, 
More than your force move us to gentleness. 

Or/. I almost die for food ; so let me have it. 

ike S. Sit down and feed, and welcome to our table. 

Or/. Speak you so gently ? Pardon me, I pray you : 
1 1 thought that all things had been savage here ; 
And therefore put I on the countenance 
Of stern commandment. But whate'er you are, 
That in this desert inaccessible, 
Under the shade of melancholy boughs, 
Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time ; 
If ever you have look'd on better days ; 
If ever been where bells have knoll'd to church ; 
If ever sat at any good man's feast ; 
If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear ; 
And know what 'tis to pity and be pitied, — 
Let gentleness my strong enforcement be : 
In the which hope I blush, and hide my sword. 

Duke S. True is it that we have seen better days; 
And have with holy bell been knoll'd to church ; 
And sat at good men's feasts ; and wiped our eyes 
Of drops that sacred pity hath engender'd : 
And therefore sit you down in gentleness, 
And take upon command 17 what help we have, 

17 " Take as you may choose to order, at your will and pleasure." In 
Lodge's tale we have it thus : " Gerismond tooke him by the hand and 
badde him welcome, willing him to sit downe in his place, and not onely to 
eat his fill, but be lord of the feast" 



J 



74 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT II. 

That to your wanting may be minister'd. 

Or/. Then but forbear your food a little while, 
Whiles, like a doe, I go to find my fawn, 
And give it food. There is an old poor man, 
Who after me hath many a weary step 
Limp'd in pure love : till he be first sufficed, — 
Oppress'd with two weak evils, age and hunger, — 
I will not touch a bit. 

Duke S. Go find him out, 

And we will nothing waste till you return. 

Orl. I thank ye ; and be bless'd for your good comfort ! 

[Exit 

Duke S. Thou see'st we are not all alone unhappy : 
This wide and universal theatre 
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene 
Wherein we play in. 

Jaq. All the world's a stage, 

And all the men and women merely players : 
They have their exits and their entrances ; 
And one man in his time plays many parts, 
His acts being seven ages. 18 As, first, the infant, 
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms : 
And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel 



18 Totus mundus agit histrionem, an observation occurring in one of the 
fragments of Petronius, is said to have been the motto over Shakespeare's 
theatre, the Globe, and was probably a familiar apothegm in his day. The 
division of human life into certain stages, or epochs, had also a classical 
origin. In some Greek verses attributed to Solon, — and, whether written 
by him or not, certainly as old as the middle of the first century, — the life 
of man is divided into ten ages of seven years each. Other Greek authors 
distributed it into seven parts, and Varro the Roman into five. A Hebrew 
doctor of the ninth century, and a Hebrew Poei of the twelfth, have made a 
similar distribution. 



SCENE VII. AS YOU LIKE IT. 75 

And shining morning face, creeping like snail 

Unwillingly to school : And then the lover, 

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad 

Made to his mistress' eyebrow : Then the soldier, 

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, 19 

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, 

Seeking the bubble reputation 

Even in the cannon's mouth : And then the justice, 

In fair round belly with good capon lined, 

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, 

Full of wise saws and modern instances ; 20 

And so he plays his part : The sixth age shifts 

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, 21 

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side ; 

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide 

For his shrunk shank ; and his big manly voice, 

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes 

And whistles in his 22 sound : Last scene of all, 

That ends this strange eventful history, 

Is second childishness and mere oblivion, 

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing. 

Re-enter Orlando, with Adam. 

Duke S. Welcome. Set down your venerable burden, 
And let him feed. 

19 Pard is one of the old names for leopard. 

20 Saws are sayings ; often so used. Modern is trite, common, familiar. 
Men may still be seen overflowing with stale, threadbare proverbs and 
phrases, and imagining themselves wondrous wise. Instances, here, is 
examples, illustrations, anecdotes, such as many an official wiseacre is fond 
of repeating on all occasions. 

- 1 The pantaloon was a stereotyped character in the old Italian farces: it 
represented a thin, emaciated old man, in slippers. 
22 His for its, the latter not being then in use. 



y6 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT IL 

Orl. I thank you most for him. 

Adam. So had you need : — 

I scarce can speak to thank you for myself. 

Duke S. Welcome ; fall to : I will not trouble you 
As yet, to question you about your fortunes. — 
Give us some music ; and, good cousin, sing. 

Song. 

Ami. Blow, blow, thou winter wind, 
Thou art not so unkind 

As man's ingratitude ; 
Thy tooth is ?iot so keen, 
Because thou art foreseen, 

Although thy breath be rude. 
Heigh-ho ! sing, heigh-ho ! unto the green holly : 
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly : 
Then, heigh-ho, the holly / 
This life is most jolly. 
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, 
That dost not bite so nigh 

As benefits forgot : 
Though thou the waters warp?* 
Thy sting is not so sharp 

As friend remember 'd not. 
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho > &>c. 

23 In the Poet's time the verb warp was sometimes used for weave, — a 
sense now retained only in the substantive. Thus in Sternhold's version of 
the Psalms : " While he doth mischief warp" and " Such wicked wiles to 
warp" ; where we should say weave. In Hickes' Thesaurus is found a 
Saxon proverb, "Winter shall warp water!' And Propertius has a line 
containing the same figure : " Africus in glaciem frigore nectit aquas." The 
appropriateness of the figure may be seen in the fine network appearance 
which water assumes in the first stages of crystallization. 



scene I. AS YOU LIKE IT. J J 

Duke S. If that you are the good Sir Roland's son, — 
As you have whisper'd faithfully you are, 
And as mine eye doth his effigies witness 
Most truly limn'd 24 and living in your face, — 
Be truly welcome hither : I'm the Duke, 
That loved your father : the residue of your fortune, 
Go to my cave and tell me. — Good old man, 
Thou art right welcome as thy master is. — 
Support him by the arm. — Give me your hand, 
And let me all your fortunes understand. \_Exeunt. 



ACT III. 

Scene I. — A Room in the Palace. 

Enter Duke Frederick, Oliver, Lords, and Attendants. 

Duke F. Not seen him since ? Sir, sir, that cannot be : 
But, were I not the better part made mercy, 
I should not seek an absent argument l 
Of my revenge, thou present. But look to it : 
Find out thy brother, wheresoe'er he is ; 
Seek him with candle ; bring him dead or living 
Within this twelvemonth, or turn thou no more 
To seek a living in our territory. 
Thy lands, and all things that thou dost call thine 
Worth seizure, do we seize into our hands, 

24 Limn'd is lined, or depicted. — It is hardly needful to say that effigies is 
the same in sense as image. 

1 Argument was used in a good many senses : here it means object. 



?8 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT III. 

Till thou canst quit 2 thee by thy brother's mouth 
Of what we think against thee. 

Oli. O, that your Highness knew my heart in this ! 
I never loved my brother in my life. 

Duke F. More villain thou. — Well, push him out of 
doors ; 
And let my officers of such a nature 
Make an extent 3 upon his house and lands : 
Do this expediently, 4 and turn him going. [Exeunt. 

Scene II. — The Forest of Arden. 

Enter Orlando, with a paper, which he hangs on a tree. 

Or/. Hang there, my verse, in witness of my love : 
And thou, thrice-crowned Queen of Night, 5 survey 
With thy chaste eye, from thy pale sphere above, 
Thy huntress' name, that my full life doth sway. 

2 Quit here is acquit. The Poet has it repeatedly in that sense. So in 
Measure for Measure, v. I : " Thou'rt condemn'd : but, for those earthly 
faults, I quit them all." And in Henry V., ii. i : " God quit you in His 
mercy ! " 

8 A law phrase, thus explained by Blackstone : " The process hereon is 
usually called an extent or extendi facias, because the Sheriff is to cause the 
lands, &c, to be appraised to their full extended value, before he delivers 
them to the plaintiff." 

4 Expediently for expeditiously. So the Poet uses expedient for expedi- 
tious. 

6 Luna Queen of Night, Proserpine Queen of Hades, and Diana the God- 
dess of Chastity, were all three sometimes identified in classical mythology ; 
hence the epithet thrice-crowned. In Chapman's Hy?nns to Night and to 
Cynthia, which were doubtless well known to Shakespeare, we have the fol- 
lowing highly poetical passage : 

Nature's bright eye-sight, and the night's fair soul, 
That with thy triple forehead dost control 
Earth, seas, and hell. 



SCENE II. AS YOU LIKE IT. 79 

O Rosalind ! these trees shall be my books, 

And in their barks my thoughts I'll character ; 

That every eye, which in this forest looks, 

Shall see thy virtue witness'd everywhere. 

Run, run, Orlando ; carve on every tree 

The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive 6 she. \_Exit. 

Enter Corin and Touchstone. 

Cor. And how like you this shepherd's life, Master 
Touchstone ? 

Touch. Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good 
life ; but in respect that it is a shepherd's life, it is naught. 
In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well ; but in respect 
that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now, in respect it is 
in the fields, it pleaseth me well ; but in respect it is not in 
the Court, it is tedious. As it is a spare life, look you, it fits 
my humour well ; but as there is no more plenty in it, it goes 
much against my stomach. Hast any philosophy in thee, 
shepherd ? 

Cor. No more but that I know, the more one sickens, the 
worse at ease he is ; and that he that wants money, means, 
and content, is without three good friends ; that the property 
of rain is to wet, and fire to burn ; that good pasture makes 
fat sheep ; and that a great cause of the night is lack of the 
Sun ; that he that hath learned no wit by nature nor art may 
complain of good breeding, 7 or comes of a very dull kindred. 

6 Inexpressible she ; the active form with the passive sense. So Milton in 
his Hymn on the Nativity : 

Harping, in loud and solemn quire, 

With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's new-born Heir. 

7 In Jonson's Sad Shepherd, Lionel says of Amie : " She's sick of the 
young shepherd that bekist her ; " sick for want of him. The usage 
occurs repeatedly in Shakespeare. See page 66, note 6. 



SO AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT in. 

Touch. Such a one is a natural 8 philosopher. Wast ever 
in Court, shepherd? 

Cor. No, truly. 

Touch. Then thou art damn'd. 

Cor. Nay, I hope, — 

Touch. Truly, thou art damn'd ; like an ill-roasted egg, 
all on one side. 

Cor. For not being at Court ? Your reason. 

Touch. Why, if thou never wast at Court, thou never 
saw'st good manners ; if thou never saw'st good manners, 
then thy manners must be wicked ; and wickedness is sin, and 
sin is damnation. Thou art in a parlous 9 state, shepherd. 

Cor. Not a whit, Master Touchstone : those that are good 
manners at the Court are as ridiculous in the country as the 
behaviour of the country is most mockable at the Court. 
You told me you salute not at the Court but you kiss 10 your 
hands : that courtesy would be uncleanly, if courtiers were 
shepherds. 

Touch. Instance, briefly ; come, instance. 

Cor. Why, we are still handling our ewes ; and their fells, 11 
you know, are greasy. 

Touch. Why, do not your courtier's hands sweat ? and is 
not the grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a 
man ? Shallow, shallow. A better instance, I say ; come. 

8 Natural being a common term for a fool, Touchstone puns on the word. 

9 Parlous is an old form of perilous ; sometimes used with a dash of 
humour, as appears to be the case in this instance. 

10 But you kiss here means without kissing. The Poet elsewhere uses but 
in this way. So in Hamlet, i. 3 : " Do not sleep but let me hear from you." 
Here the meaning clearly is, " Do not sleep without letting me hear from 
you." 

11 Hides ox skins; as in Jonson's Discoveries : "A prince is the pastor 
of the people. He ought to shear, not to flea his sKeep 5 to take their fleeces, 
not their fells" 



SCENE II. AS YOU LIKE IT. 8 1 

Cor. Besides, our hands are hard. 

Touch. Your lips will feel them the sooner. Shallow 
again. A more sounder 12 instance, come. 

Cor. And they are often tarr'd over with the surgery of 
our sheep ; and would you have us kiss tar ? The courtier's 
hands are perfumed with civet. 

Touch. Most shallow man ! thou worms-meat, in respect 
of 13 a good piece of flesh, indeed ! Learn of the wise, and 
perpend: 14 Civet is of a baser birth than tar, — the very 
uncleanly flux of a cat. Mend the instance, shepherd. 

Cor. You have too courtly a wit for me : I'll rest. 

Touch. Wilt thou rest damn'd? God help thee, shallow 
man ! God make incision in thee ! 15 thou art raw. 

Cor. Sir, I am a true labourer : I earn that I eat, get that; f 
I wear ; owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness ; glad of 
other men's good, content with my harm ; and the greatesl A 
of my pride is, to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck. 

Touch. That is another simple sin in you ; to bring the 
ewes and the rams together. If thou be'st not damn'd for 
this, the Devil himself will have no shepherds ; I cannot see 
else how thou shouldst 'scape. 

Cor. Here comes young Master Ganymede, my new mis- 
tress's brother. 



12 Comparatives, and superlatives too, were thus doubled by all writers 
and speakers in Shakespeare's time. 

13 In respect of is in comparison with. See Hamlet, page 219, note 29. 

14 Perpend is consider, or weigh mentally. 

15 Alluding, apparently, to the practice of surgeons, who used cuttings a.\\d 
burnings for the healing of a disease called the simples ; a quibble being im- 
plied withal between simples and simpleton. His being raw is the reason 
why incision should be made, in Touchstone's logic. Bear in mind that 
raw is used in the double sense of green and sore, and perhaps this will ren- 
der the passage clear enough. 



82 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT III. 

Enter Rosalind, reading a paper. 

Ros. F?-om the east to western Ind, 
No jewel is like Rosalind. 
Her worth, being mounted on the wind, 
Through all the world bears Rosalind. 
All the pictures fairest lined 16 
Are but black to Rosalind. 
Let no face be kept in mind 
But the face of Rosalind. 

Touch. I'll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners and 
suppers and sleeping-hours excepted : it is the right butter- 
woman's rack 17 to market. 

Ros. Out, Fool ! 

Touch. For a taste : 

If a hart do lack a hind, 

Let him seek out Rosalind. 

If the cat will after kind, 

So be sure will Rosalind. 

Winter garments must be lined, 

So must slender Rosalind. 

They that reap must sheaf and bind ; 

Then to cart with Rosalind. 

Sweetest nut hath sourest rind, 

Such a nut is Rosalind. 

He that sweetest rose will find, 

Must find love's prick and Rosalind. 



lfj Lined is delineated or drawn. 

17 Rack is an old yet well-known term for the ambling motion of a horse 
something between a trot and a gallop ; or a " false gallop." 



SCENE II. AS YOU LIKE IT. 83 

This is the very false gallop 18 of verses : why do you infect 
yourself with them ? 

Ros. Peace, you dull Fool ! I found them on a tree. 

Touch. Truly, the tree yields bad fruit. 

Ros. I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a 
medlar: then it will bear the earliest fruit 19 i' the country; 
for you'll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right 
virtue of the medlar. 

Touch. You have said ; but whether wisely or no, let the 
forest judge. 

Enter Celia, reading a paper. 

Ros. Peace ! 
Here comes my sister, reading : stand aside. 
Celia. [Reads.] Why should this a desert be ? 

For 20 it is unpeopled? No; 

Tongues Fit hang on every tree, 

That shall civil 21 sayings show : 

Some, how brief the life of man 

Runs his erring pilgrimage, 

That the stretching of a span 

Buckles in his sum of age ; 

Some, of violated vows 

18 So in Nashe's Pierce Pennilesse, 1593 : " I would trot a false gallop 
through the rest of his ragged verses, but that, if I should retort the rime 
doggerel aright, I must make my verses (as he doth) run hobbling, like a 
brewer's cart upon the stones, and observe no measure in their feet." 

19 The medlar is one of the latest fruits, being uneatable till the end of 
November. Moreover, though the latest of fruits to ripen, it is one of the 
earliest to rot. Does Rosalind mean that when the tree is graffed with 
Touchstone, its fruit will rot earlier than ever ? 

20 p or was often used where we should use because. 

21 Civil is here used in the same sense as when we say, civil wisdom and 
civil life, in opposition to a solitary state. 



84 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT III 

'Twixt the souls of friend and fiend: 

But upon the fairest boughs, 

Or at every sentence* e?id, 

Will I Rosalinda write ; 

Teaching all that read to know 

The quintessence of every sprite 

Heaven would in little— show. 

Therefore Heaven Nature charged 

That one body should be fill' d 

With all graces wide-enlarged : 

Nature presently distill 1 d 

Helen's cheek, but ?wt her heart; 

Cleopatra's majesty; 

Atalanta's better part ; 23 

Sad Lucrctia's modesty. 

Thus Rosalind of many parts 

By heavenly synod 7aas devised ; 

Of many faces, eyes, and hearts, 

To have the touches** dearest prized. 
Heaven would that she these gifts should have, 
And I to live and die her slave. 
Ros. O most gentle pulpiter ! what tedious homily of love 
have you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried, 
Have patience, good people ! 

22 In little means in miniature. 

23 The commentators have been a good deal puzzled to make out what 
this better part really was. It must have been that wherein Atalanta sur- 
passed the other ladies mentioned. Now she seems to have been the 
nimblest-footed of all the ancient girls ; so fleet, that she ran clean away 
from all her lovers, till one of them hit upon the device of throwing golden 
apples in her way. This would infer exquisite symmetry and proportion of 
form; and Orlando must of course imagine all formal, as well as all mental 
and moral graces, in his " heavenly Rosalind." 

24 Touches is traits or qualities, or both. 



SCENE II. AS YOU LIKE IT. 85 

Cel. How now ! back, friends : — shepherd, go off a little : 
— go with him, sirrah. 

Touch. Come, shepherd, let us make an honourable re- 
treat ; though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and 
scrippage. \_Exeunt Corin and Touchstone. 

Cel. Didst thou hear these verses ? 

Ros. O, yes, I heard them all, and more too ; for some 
of them had in them more feet than the verses would bear. 

Cel. That's no matter : the feet might bear the verses. 

Ros. Ay, but the feet were lame, and could not bear 
themselves without the verse, and therefore stood lamely in 
the verse. 

Cel. But didst thou hear without wondering how thy name 
should be hang'd and carved upon these trees ? 

Ros. I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder be- 
fore you came ; for look here what I found on a palm-tree : 
I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was 
an Irish rat, 25 which I can hardly remember. 

Cel. Trow you who hath done this ? 

Ros. Is it a man? 

Cel. And a chain, that you once wore, about his neck. 
Change you colour? 

Ros. I pr'ythee, who? 

Cel. O Lord, Lord ! it is a hard matter for friends to 
meet ; but mountains may be removed with earthquakes, and 
so encounter. 26 



25 This romantic way of killing rats in Ireland is mentioned by Jonson 
and other writers of the time. So in the Poetaster : " Rhyme them to death, 
as they do Irish rats in drumming tunes." 

26 In Holland's Pliny, Shakespeare found that " two hills removed by an 
earthquake encountered together, charging as it were and with violence as- 
asulting one another, and retiring again with a most mighty noise." 



86 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT III. 

Ros. Nay, but who is it ? 

Cel. Is it possible ? 

Ros. Nay, I pr'ythee now with most petitionary vehemence, 
tell me who it is. 

Cel. O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful won- 
derful ! and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all 
whooping ! 27 

Ros. Good my compaction, 28 dost thou think, though I 
am caparison'd like a man, I have a doublet and hose in 
my disposition ? One inch of delay more is a South-sea of 
discovery : 29 I pr'ythee, tell me who is it quickly, and speak 
apace. I would thou couldst stammer, that thou mightst 
pour this conceal'd man out of thy mouth, as wine comes 
out of a narrow-mouth'd bottle, — either too much at once, 
or none at all. I pr'ythee, take the cork out of thy mouth, 
that I may drink thy tidings. 

Cel. So you may put a man in your stomach. 

Ros. Is he of God's making? What manner of man ? Is 
his head worth a hat, or his chin worth a beard ? 

27 To whoop or hoop is to cry out, to exclaim with astonishment. Out of 
all cry seems to have been a similar phrase for the expression of vehement 
admiration. 

28 " Good my complection " is merely a common inversion for " my good 
complection," like " good my lord," " dear my brother," " gentle my sister," 
&c. The phrase here means, no doubt, " my good wrapper-up of mystery " ; 
as Celia has been tantalizing Rosalind " with half-told, half-withheld intelli- 
gence." Complection for co?nplicator. For this explanation I am indebted 
to Mr. A. E. Brae. See Critical Notes. 

29 Here we have a tale of questions falling as thick as hail upon the 
devoted Celia. See how many things she is called upon to discover ; and 
then say whether she has not incurred a laborious and vexatious duty by 
her delay in answering the first question. How plain it is that her inch of 
delay has cast her upon a South Sea — a vast and unexplored ocean — of 
discovery. The more Celia delays her revelation as to who the man is. the 
more she will nave to reveal! about him. Why ? Because Rosalind fills u^ 



SCENE II. AS YOU LIKE IT. 87 

Cel. Nay, he hath but a little beard. 

Ros. Why, God will send more, if the man will be thank- 
ful : let me stay the growth of his beard, if thou delay me not 
the knowledge of his chin. 

Cel. It is young Orlando, that tripp'd up the wrestler's 
heels and your heart both in an instant. 

Ros. Nay, but the Devil take mocking : speak sad brow 
and true maid. 30 

Cel V faith, coz, 'tis he. 

Ros. Orlando ? 

Cel. Orlando. 

Ros. Alas the day ! what shall I do with my doublet and 
hose ? What did he when thou saw'st him ? What said he ? 
How looked he? Wherein went he? 31 What makes he 
here? 32 Did he ask for me? Where remains he? How 
parted he with thee ? and when shalt thou see him again ? 
Answer me in one word. 

Cel. You must borrow me Gargantua's mouth first : 33 'tis 
a word too great for any mouth of this age's size. To say 
ay and no to these particulars is more than to answer in a 
catechism. 

Ros. But doth he know that I am in this forest, and in 
man's apparel? Looks he as freshly as he did the day he 
wrestled ? 



the delay (increases it, in fact) with fresh interrogatories, whereby Celia 
becomes lost in a South Sea of questions. — Ingleby. 

30 Speak with a serious countenance, and as a true virgin. 

31 " How was he dressed ? " 

82 " What makes he here ? " is " What is he doing here ? " or " What is 
his business here ? " just as before, in the first scene, note 6. 

33 Gargantua is the name of a most gigantic giant in Rabelais, who forks 
five pilgrims, staves and all, into his mouth in a salad, and afterwards picks 
them out from between his teeth ; not swallows them, as White says. 



88 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT III. 

Cel. It is as easy to count atomies 34 as to resolve the prop- 
ositions of a lover : but take a taste of my finding him, and 
relish it with good observance. I found him under a tree, 
like a dropp'd acorn. 

Ros. It may well be call'd Jove's tree, when it drops such 
fruit. 

Cel. Give me audience, good madam. 

Ros. Proceed. 

Cel. There lay he, stretch'd along, like a wounded knight. 

Ros. Though it be pity to see such a sight, it well becomes 
the ground. 

Cel. Cry, holla ! 35 to thy tongue, I pr'ythee ; it curvets 
unseasonably. He was furnish'd like a hunter. 

Ros. O, ominous ! he comes to kill my heart. 36 

Cel. I would sing my song without a burden : thou bring'st 
me out of tune. 

Ros. Do you not know I am a woman ? when I think, I 
must speak. Sweet, say on. 

Cel. You bring me out. — Soft ! comes he not here ? 

Ros. 'Tis he : slink by, and note him. 

[Celia and Rosalind retire. 

Enter Orlando and Jaques. 

Jaq. I thank you for your company ; but, good faith, 
I had as lief have been myself alone. 

Orl. And so had I ; but yet, for fashion's sake, 
I thank you too for your society. 

Jaq. God b' wi' you ! let's meet as little as we can. 

34 " An atomie is a mote flying in the sun. Any thing so small that it 
cannot be made less." Bullokar's English Expositor, 1616. 

35 This was a term by which the rider restrained and stopped his horse. 

36 A quibble between hart and heart, then spelt the same. 



SCENE ii. AS YOU LIKE IT. 89 

Or/. I do desire we may be better strangers. 

Jaq. I pray you, mar no more trees with writing love- 
songs in their barks. 

Or I. I pray you, mar no more of my verses with reading 
them ill-favouredly. 

Jaq. Rosalind is your love's name ? 

Or/. Yes, just. 

Jaq. I do not like her name. 

Or/. There was no thought of pleasing you when she was 
christen'd. 

Jaq. What stature is she of ? 

Or/. Just as high as my heart. 

Jaq. You are full of pretty answers. Have you not been 
acquainted with goldsmiths' wives, and conn'd them out of 
rings ? 37 

Or/. Not so ; but I answer you right painted cloth, 38 
from whence you have studied your questions. 

Jaq. You have a nimble wit : I think 'twas made of Ata- 
lanta's heels. 39 Will you sit down with me ? and we two will 
rail against our mistress the world and all our misery. 

Or/. I will chide no breather in the world but myself, 
against whom I know most faults. 

Jaq. The worst fault you have is to be in love. 

Or/. 'Tis a fault I will not change for your best virtue. I 
am weary of you. 

87 The meaning is, that goldsmiths' wives have given him the freedom of 
their husbands' shops, where he has committed to memory the mottoes in- 
scribed on their rings and other jewels. 

38 To answer right painted cloth is to answer sententiously. Painted cloth 
was a species of hangings for the walls of rooms, which was cloth painted 
with various devices and mottoes. The verses, mottoes, and proverbial sen- 
tences on such cloths are often made the subject of allusion in old writers, 

39 The nimble-footedness of Atalanta has been referred to before, note 23. 



90 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT III. 

Jaq. By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I found 
you. 

Orl. He is drown'd in the brook : look but in, and you 
shall see him. 

Jaq. There I shall see mine own figure. 

Orl. Which I take to be either a fool or a cipher. 
Jaq. I'll tarry no longer with you : farewell, good Signior 
Love. 

Orl. I am glad of your departure : adieu, good Monsieur 
Melancholy. [Exit Jaques. Celia and 

Rosalind come forward. 

Ros. [Aside to Celia.] I will speak to him like a saucy 
lacquey, and under that habit play the knave with him. — 
Do you hear, forester? 

Orl. Very well : what would you ? 

Ros. I pray you, what is't o'clock? 

Orl. You should ask me what time o' day : there's no 
clock in the forest. 

Ros. Then there is no true lover in the forest ; else sigh- 
ing every minute, and groaning every hour, would detect the 
lazy foot of Time as well as a clock. 

Orl. And why not the swift foot of Time ? had not that 
been as proper? 

Ros. By no means, sir. Time travels in divers paces with 
divers persons : I'll tell you who Time ambles withal, who 
Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he 
stands still withal. 

Orl. I pr'ythee, who doth he trot withal? 

Ros. Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the 
contract of her marriage and the day it is solemnized : 40 if 

40 Hardly any thing is so apt to make a short journey seem long, as riding 
on a hard-trotting horse, however fast the horse may go. On the other hand, 



SCENE II. AS YOU LIKE IT. 91 

the interim be but a se'nnight, Time's pace is so hard that it 
seems the length of seven year. 

Orl. Who ambles Time withal? 

Ros. With a priest that lacks Latin, and a rich man that 
hath not the gout ; for the one sleeps easily, because he can- 
not study ; and the other lives merrily, because he feels no 
pain : the one lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learn- 
ing ; the other knowing no burden of heavy tedious penury : 
these Time ambles withal. 

Orl. Who doth he gallop withal? 

Ros. With a thief to the gallows ; for, though he go as 
softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there. 

Orl. Who stays it still withal? 

With lawyers in the vacation ; for they sleep be- 
and term, and then they perceive not how Time 




Where dwell you, pretty youth? 
With this shepherdess, my sister ; here in the skirts 
of the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat. 

Orl. Are you native of this place ? 

Ros. As the cony, that you see dwell where she is kin- 
dled. 41 

Orl. Your accent is something finer than you could pur- 
chase in so removed 42 a dwelling. 

Ros. I have been told so of many : but indeed an old re- 
ligious uncle of mine taught me to speak, who was in his 

to ride an ambling horse makes a long journey seem short, because the 
horse rides so easy. It were hardly needful to say this, but that some have 
lately proposed to invert the order of the nags in this case. 

41 Kindled, here, is altogether another word than our present verb to kindle. 
It is from kind, which, again, is from a word meaning to bring forth. The 
word has long been obsolete. 

** Remov&d is sequestered, solitary, or lonely ; without neighbours. 



92 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT III. 

youth an inland man ; one that knew courtship 43 too well, 
for there he fell in love. I have heard him read many 
lectures against it ; and I thank God I am not a woman, to 
be touch 'd with so many giddy offences as he hath generally 
tax'd their whole sex withal. 

Or/. Can you remember any of the principal evils that he 
laid to the charge of women ? 

Ros. There were none principal : they were all like one 
another as half-pence are ; every one fault seeming most 
monstrous till his fellow-fault came to match it. 

Or/. I pr'ythee, recount some of them. 

Ros. No, I will not cast away my physic but on those that 
are sick. There is a man haunts the forest, that abuses our 
young plants with carving Rosalind on their barks ; hangs 
odes upon hawthorns, and elegies on brambles ; all, forsooth, 
deifying the name of Rosalind : if I could meet that fancy- 
monger, I would give him some good counsel, for he seems 
to have the quotidian 44 of love upon him. 

Or/. I am he that is so love-shaked : I pray you, tell me 
your remedy. 

Ros. There is none of my uncle's marks upon you : he 
taught me how to know a man in love ; in which cage of 
rushes I am sure you are not a prisoner. 

Or/. What were his marks ? 

Ros. A lean cheek, — which you have not ; a blue eye 45 
and sunken, — which you have not ; an unquestionable 

43 Courtship is the practice of Courts ; courtliness. 

44 Quotidian was the name of an intermittent fever, so called because the 
fits came on every day. In like manner, tertian and quartan were applied 
to those that came on once in three and once in four days. 

45 Not blue in our sense of the phrase ; but with blueness about the eyes, 
such as to indicate hunger or dejection. Blue eyes were called gray in the 
Poet's time. See The Tempest, page 63, note 70. 



SCENE II. AS YOU LIKE IT. 93 

spirit, 46 — which you have not ; a beard neglected, — which 
you have not ; — but I pardon you for that ; for simply your 
having in beard is a younger brother's revenue : 47 — then 
your hose should be ungarter'd, your bonnet unbanded, your 
sleeve unbotton'd, your shoe untied, and every thing about 
you demonstrating a careless desolation_^ v But you are no 
such man : you are rather point-devise 48 j in your accoutre- 
ments ; as loving yourself than seeming the lover of any 
other. 

Orl. Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love. 

Ros. Me believe it ! you may as soon make her that yob 
love believe it ; which, I warrant, she is apter to do than to 
confess she does : that is one of the points in the which 
women still give the lie to their consciences. But, in good 
sooth, are you he that hangs the verses on the trees, wherein 
Rosalind is so admired? 

Orl. I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosa- 
lind, I am that he, that unfortunate he. 

Ros. But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak ? 

Orl. Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much. 

Ros. Love is merely a madness ; and, I tell you, deserves 
as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do : 49 and the 
reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is, that the 
lunacy is so ordinary, that the whippers are in love too. Yet 
I profess curing it by counsel. 

46 A reserved, unsociable spirit, the reverse of that in Hamlet: "Thou 
comest in such a questiojiable shape that I will speak to thee." 

47 Under the law of primogeniture, a younger brother's revenue was apt to 
be small. Orlando is too young for his having in beard to amount to much. 

48 That is, precise, exact ; dressed with finical nicety. 

49 This shows how lunatics were apt to be treated in the Poet's time. But 
then lunacy was often counterfeited, as it still is, either as a cover to crime or 
as an occasion for charity. 



94 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT ill. 

Orl. Did you ever cure any so ? 

Ros. Yes, one ; and in this manner. He was to imagine 
me his love, his mistress ; and I set him every day to woo 
me : at which time would I, being but a moonish 50 youth, 
grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing, and liking ; proud, 
fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of 
smiles ; for every passion something, and for no passion truly 
any thing, as boys and women are for the most part cattle of 
this colour : would now like him, now loathe him j then en- 
tertain him, then forswear him ; now weep for him, then spit 
at him ; that I drave my suitor from his mad humour of love 
to a loving humour of madness ; which was, to forswear the 
full stream of the world, and to live in a nook merely 51 mon- 
astic. And thus I cured him ; and this way will I take upon 
me to wash your liver 52 as clean as a sound sheep's heart, 
that there shall not be one spot of love in't. 

Orl. I would not be cured, youth. 

Ros. I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind, 
and come every day to my cote and woo me. 

Orl. Now, by the faith of my love, I will : tell me where 
it is. 

Ros. Go with me to it, and I'll show it you ; and, by the 
way, you shall tell me where in the forest you live. Will 
you go? 

Orl. With all my heart, good youth. 

Ros. Nay, you must call me Rosalind. — Come, sister, 
will you go? \_Exeu?it. 

60 As changeable as the Moon. 

51 Merely, here, is entirely or absolutely. The Poet often has it thus. And 
so mere, in a former scene : " Second childishness and mere oblivion." 

52 The liver was supposed to be the seat of the passions and affections, 
especially of love and courage. Shakespeare very often speaks of it so. 



:>CENE III. AS YOU LIKE IT. 95 

Scene III. — Another Part of the Forest. 

Enter Touchstone and Audrey ; Jaques behind. 

Touch. Come apace, good Audrey : ' I will fetch up your 
goats, Audrey. And how, Audrey ? am I the man yet ? doth 
my simple feature content you ? 2 

1 Apace is quickly or fast. — Audrey is a corruption of Etheldreda ; the 
saint of that name being so styled in ancient calendars. 

2 In explanation of this passage, Mr. Joseph Crosby writes me as follows : 
" Mr. W. Wilkins, of Trinity College, Dublin, has recently pointed out that 
feature formerly meant a literary work, a poem, a drama, &c, just as we now 
call such a work a exposition ; being from the Latin verb facere, to make. 
Ben Jonson uses the word in this sense when he says of his creation, the play 
of Volpone, that two months before it was no feature : 

To this there needs no lie, but this his creature, 
Which was two months since no feature ; 
And, though he dares give them five lives to mend it, 
'Tis known, five weeks fully penn'd it. 

Various other examples of the use of this word in the sense of a literary pro- 
duction have been discovered, even as far back as the time of Pliny, who, in 
the Preface to his Natural History, speaks of his work as ' libri nati apud me 
proxima. fetura.' " Then, referring to the passage in the text, Mr. Crosby 
continues : " From the context we find that Touchstone calls himself ' a poet,' 
and is nettled because his verses ' cannot be understood,' and laments that 
the gods had not made his rustic adorer ' poetical.' Here, instead of ask- 
ing, as the question is commonly supposed to signify, 'How does my intel- 
ligent countenance strike you now ? ' it is evident that, being a clown of 
brains and observation, he had been making love, as he had seen it done 
' at Court,' by sending ' good Audrey ' a poetical billet-doux ; and his ques- 
tion means, ' How are you pleased with my love-ditty ?' He tells us else- 
where that he ' could rhyme you eight years together, dinners and suppers 
and sleeping-hours excepted ' ; and no wonder he felt chagrined that his 
' simple feature,' as he modestly terms his love-rhymes, was unregarded, and 
his ' good wit ' thrown away, ' not being seconded with the forward child, un- 
derstanding.' It was not his good looks that the clever and sharp-witted 
fellow was sensitive about : Audrey could have had no trouble to under- 
stand them : it was the non-appreciation of his gallant poetical ' feature ' that 



g6 AS YOU LIKE IT. 



ACT III. 



Aud. Your features ! Lord warrant us ! what features ? 

Touch, I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most 
capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths. 3 

Jag. [Aside.~\ O knowledge ill-inhabited, — worse than 
Jove in a thatch'd house ! 4 

Touch. When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor 
a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, under- 
standing, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning 
in a little room. 5 — Truly, I would the gods had made thee 
poetical. 

Aud. I do not know what poetical is : is it honest in deed 
and word ? is it a true thing ? 

Touch. No, truly ; for the truest poetry is the most feign- 
ing ; and lovers are given to poetry ; and what they swear in 
poetry, it may be said, as lovers, they do feign. 

Aud. Do you wish, then, that the gods had made me 
poetical ? 



disgusted him, and struck him ' more dead than a great reckoning in a little 
room.' " 

3 Shakespeare remembered that caper was Latin for goat, and thence 
chose this epithet. There is also a quibble between goats and Goths. 

4 We have already had disputable for disputatious, and unexpressive for 
inexpressible. So here we have ill-inhabited for ill-inhabiting ; that is, ill- 
lodged. An old classical fable represents that Jupiter and Mercury were 
once overtaken by night in Phrygia, and were inhospitably excluded by all 
the people, till at last an old poor couple, named Philemon and Baucis, who 
lived in a thatched house, took them in, and gave them the best entertainment 
the house would afford. See page 79, note 6. 

5 Rabelais has a saying, that " there is only one quarter of an hour in hu- 
man life passed ill, and that is between the calling for a reckoning and the 
paying it." A heavy bill for narrow quarters is apt to dash the spirits of 
tavern mirth. There is, as Singer remarks, " much humour in comparing 
the blank countenance of a disappointed poet or wit, whose effusions have 
not been comprehended, to that of the reveller who has to pay largely for his 
carousing." 



scene ill. AS YOU LIKE IT. 97 

Touch. I do, truly ; for thou swear'st to me thou art hon- 
est : now, if thou wert a poet, I might have some hope thou 
didst feign. 

Aud. Would you not have me honest? 

Touch. No, truly, unless thou wert hard-favour'd ; for hon- 
esty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar. 

Jaq. [Aside.'] A material Fool ! 6 

Aud. Well, I am not fair ; and therefore I pray the gods 
make me honest. 

Touch. Truly, and to cast away honesty upon a foul slut, 
were to put good meat into an unclean dish. 

Aud. I am not a slut, though I thank the gods I am foul. 7 

Touch. Well, praised be the gods for thy foulness ! slut- 
tishness may come hereafter. But, be it as it may be, I will 
marry thee: and to that end I have been with Sir 8 Oliver 
Martext, the vicar of the next village ; who hath promised to 
meet me in this place of the forest, and to couple us. 

Jaq. [Aside.'] I would fain see this meeting. 

Aud. Well, the gods give us joy ! 

Touch. Amen. A man may, if he were of a fearful heart, 
stagger in this attempt ; for here we have no temple but the 
wood, no assembly but horn'd beasts. But what though? 
Courage ! Here comes Sir Oliver. — 

6 A material Fool is a Fool with matter in him. — Honest and honesty are 
here used for chaste and chastity. So in i. 2, of this play : " Those that she 
makes fair, she scarce makes honest ; and those that she makes honest, she 
makes very ill-favoured." 

7 Audrey uses foul as opposed to fair ; that is, for plain, homely. She 
has good authority for doing so. Thus in Thomas's History of Italy : " If 
the maiden be fair, she is soon had, and little money given with her; if she 
befoul, they advance her with a better portion." 

8 Sir was in common use as a clerical title in Shakespeare's time, and 
long before. He has several instances of it ; as, Sir Hugh, the Welsh 
parson. 



98 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT III. 

Enter Sir Oliver Martext. 

Sir Oliver Martext, you are well met : will you dispatch us 
here under this tree, or shall we go with you to your chapel? 

Sir Oli. Is there none here to give the woman? 

Touch. I will not take her on gift of any man. 

Sir Oli. Truly, she must be given, or the marriage is not 
lawful. 

Jaq. [Coming fonuara 7 .'] Proceed, proceed : I'll give her. 

Touch. Good even, good Master What-ye-call't : how do 
you, sir? You are very well met: God 'ild 9 you for your 
last company : I am very glad to see you : — even a toy in 
hand here, sir : — nay, pray be cover'd. 10 

Jaq. Will you be married, Motley ? 

Touch. As the ox hath his bow, 11 sir, the horse his curb, 
and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires ; and as 
pigeons bill, so wedlock would be nibbling. 

Jaq. And will you, being a man of your breeding, be mar- 
ried under a bush, like a beggar? Get you to church, and 
have a good priest that can tell you what marriage is : this 
fellow will but join you together as they join wainscot ; then 
one of you will prove a shrunk panel, and like green timber 
warp, warp. 

Touch. [Aside. .] I am not in the mind but I were better 
to be married of him than of another : for he is not like to 
marry me well ; and not being well married, it will be a good 
excuse for me hereafter to leave my wife. 

Jaq. Go thou with me, and let me counsel thee. 



9 That is, " God yield you " ; an old phrase for " God reward you." 

10 Jaques is supposed to be standing with his hat off, out of deference to 
the present company. See Hcnnlet, page 218, note 24. 

11 His yoke, which, in ancient time, resembled a bow or branching horns. 



scene IV. AS YOU LIKE IT. 99 

Touch. Come, sweet Audrey : we must be married. — 
Farewell, good Master Oliver : — not, 

sweet Olivet', O brave Oliver, 
Leave me not behind thee ; — 

but, 

Wend away ; be gone, I say, 

1 will not to wedding with thee. l<i 

[Exeunt Jaques, Touchstone, and Audrey. 

Sir OH. Tis no matter : ne'er a fantastical knave of them 

all shall flout me out of my calling. [Exit. 



Scene IV. — Another Part of the Forest. Before a Cottage. 
Enter Rosalind and Celia. 

Ros. Never talk to me ; I will weep. 

Cel. Do, I pr'ythee ; but yet have the grace to consider 
that tears do not become a man. 

Ros. But have I not cause to weep? 

Cel. As good cause as one would desire ; therefore weep. 

Ros. His very hair is of the dissembling colour. 

Cel. Something browner than Judas's : l marry, his kisses 
are Judas's own children. 

Ros. I'faith, his hair is of a good colour. 

12 The ballad of " O sweet Oliver, leave me not behind thee," and the 
answer to it, are entered on the Stationers' books in 1584 and 1586. Touch- 
stone says, I will sing, not that part of the ballad which says, " Leave me 
not behind thee " ; but that which says, " Be gone, I say," probably part of 
the answer. 

1 Judas was represented in old paintings and tapestry, with red hair and 
beard. So in The It/satiate Countess ; " I ever thought by his red beard he 
would prove a Judas." 



IOO AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT ill. 

Cel. An excellent colour : your chestnut was ever the only 
colour. 

Ros. And his kissing is as full of sanctity as the touch of 
holy bread. 

Cel. He hath bought a pair of chaste lips of Diana : a nun 
of Winter's sisterhood kisses not more religiously ; the very 
ice of chastity is in them. 

Ros. But why did he swear he would come this morning, 
and comes not? 

Cel. Nay, certainly, there is no truth in him. 

Ros. Do you think so ? 

Cel. Yes ; I think he is not a pick-purse nor a horse- 
stealer ; but, for his verity in love, I do think him as concave 
as a covered goblet or a worm-eaten nut. 

Ros. Not true in love ? 

Cel. Yes, when he is in ; but I think he is not in. 

Ros. You have heard him swear downright he was. 

Cel. Was is not is: besides, the oath of a lover is no 
stronger than the word of a tapster ; 2 they are both the con- 
firmed of false reckonings. He attends here in the forest on 
the Duke your father. 

kos. I met the Duke yesterday, and had much question 3 
with him : he ask'd me, of what parentage I was ; I told him, 
of as good as he ; so he laugh 'd, and let me go. But what 
talk we of fathers, when there is such a man as Orlando ? 

Cel. O, that's a brave man ! he writes brave verses, speaks 
brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely, 
quite traverse, athwart the heart of his lover; as a puny 
tilter, that spurs his horse but on one side, breaks his staff 

2 So the ancient proverb, " At lovers' perjuries Jove laughs." 

3 Question, here, is talk or conversation. See The Merchant, page 164. 
note 20. 



SCENE V. AS YOU LIKE IT, IOI 

like a noble goose : 4 but all's brave that youth mounts and 
folly guides. — Who comes here ? 

Enter Corin. 

Cor. Mistress and master, you have oft inquired 
After the shepherd that complain'd of love, 
Whom you saw sitting by me on the turf, 
Praising the proud disdainful shepherdess 
That was his mistress. 

Cel. Well, and what of him ? 

Cor. If you will see a pageant truly play'd, 
Between the pale complexion of true love 
And the red glow of scorn and proud disdain, 
Go hence a little, and I shall conduct you, 
If you will mark it. 

Ros. O, come, let us remove : 

The sight of lovers feedeth those in love. — 
Bring us to see this sight, and you shall say 
I prove a busy actor in their play. \Exeuni. 



Scene V. — Another Part of the Forest. 

Enter Silvius and Phebe 

Sil. Sweet Phebe, do not scorn me ; do not, Phebe : 
Say that you love me not ; but say not so 
In bitterness. The common executioner, 
Whose heart th' accustom'd sight of death makes hard. 
Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck 

4 An allusion to tilting, where it was held disgraceful for a knight to 
break his lance across the body of his adversary, instead of by a push of the 
point. See Much Ado, page ill, note 12. 



102 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT IIL 

But first begs pardon : l will you sterner be 
Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops ? 9 

Enter Rosalind, Celia, and Corin, behind. 

Phe. I would not be thy executioner : 
I fly thee, for I would not injure thee. 
Thou tell'st me there is murder in mine eye : 
'Tis pretty, sure, and very probable, 
That eyes — that are the frail'st and softest things, 
Who shut their coward gates on atomies — 
Should be call'd tyrants, butchers, murderers ! 
Now I do frown on thee with all my heart ; 
And, if mine eyes can wound, now let them kill thee : 
Now counterfeit to swoon ; why, now fall down ; 
Or, if thou canst not, O, for shame, for shame, 
Lie not, to say mine eyes are murderers ! 
Now show the wound mine eye hath made in thee : 
Scratch thee but with a pin, and there remains 
Some scar of it ; lean but upon a rush, 
The cicatrice and capable impressure 3 
Thy palm some moment keeps : but now mine eyes, 

1 It was customary for the executioner to kneel down and ask pardon of 
the victim, before striking him. — Here, again, but begs means without beg- 
ging. See page 8o, note 10. 

2 This is a phrase of frequent occurrence in old writers, and seems to 
have been a common hysteron-proteron for to live and die. Its meaning 
has been somewhat disputed. One explanation is, " subsist from the cra- 
dle to the grave " ; another, " being constant to a thing to the end." I pre- 
fer the explanation given by Dr. Sebastian Evans to Dr. C. M. Ingleby: 
" It means of course, to make the thing a matter of life and death. The 
profession or calling of a man is that by which he dies and lives ; that is, by 
which he lives, and failing which he dies." 

3 Cicatrice is scar, or skin-mark. Capable impressure is sensible impres- 
sion. So the Poet has incapable for insensible or unconscious ; Hamlet, iv. 4 : 
" As one incapable of her own distress." 



SCENE V. AS YOU LIKE IT. IO3 

Which I have darted at thee, hurt thee not ; 
Nor, I am sure, there is no force in eyes 
That can do hurt. 

Si/. O dear Phebe, 

If ever — as that ever may be near — 
You meet in some fresh cheek the power of fancy, 4 
Then shall you know the wounds invisible 
That love's keen arrows make. 

Phe. But, till that time, 

Come not thou near me ; and, when that time comes, 
Afflict me with thy mocks, pity me not ; 
As, till that time, I shall not pity thee. 

Ros. \_Coming forward. ~\ And why, I pray you? Who 
might be your mother, 
That you insult, exult, and all at once, 
Over the wretched? What though you have no. beauty, — 
As, by my faith, I see no more in you 
Than without candle may go dark to bed, — 
Must you be therefore proud and pitiless ? 5 
Why, what means this ? Why do you look on me ? 
I see no more in you than in the ordinary 
Of Nature's sale-work : 6 — 'Od's my little life, 7 
I think she means to tangle my eyes too ! — 
No, faith, proud mistress, hope not after it : 



4 The use of fancy for love is very frequent in Shakespeare. 

5 Rosalind knows that to tell Phebe she ought not to be proud because 
she has beauty, would but make her the prouder ; she therefore tells her she 
ought not to be proud because she lacks it. The best way to take down 
people's pride often is, to assume that they cannot be so big fools as to think 
they have any thing to be proud of. 

6 Meaning, apparently, work made for the general market, and not to 
particular order or for any special purpose or purchaser. 

7 A petty oath ; 'Od's being a diminutive or disguise of God's. 



104 AS YOU LIKE IT. act iv 

Tis not your inky brows, your black-silk hair, 
Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream, 
That can entame my spirits to your worship. — 
You foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her, 
Like foggy south, puffing with wind and rain ? 
You are a thousand times a properer 8 man 
Than she a woman : 'tis such fools as you 
That make the world full of ill-favour'd children : 
'Tis not her glass, but you, that flatters her ; 
And out of you she sees herself more proper 
Than any of her lineaments can show her. — 
But, mistress, know yourself: down on your knees, 
And thank Heaven, fasting, for a good man's love : 
For I must tell you friendly in your ear, — 
Sell when you can : you are not for all markets : 
Cry the man mercy ; 9 love him ; take his offer : 
Foul is most foul, being foul to be a scoffer. 10 — 
So, take her to thee, shepherd : — fare you well. 

Phe. Sweet youth, I pray you, chide a year together : 
I had rather hear you chide than this man woo. 

Ros. He's fallen in love with her foulness, and she'll fall 
in love with my anger : — if it be so, as fast as she answers 
thee with frowning looks, I'll sauce her with bitter words. — 
Why look you so upon me ? 

Phe. For no ill will I bear you. 

Ros. I pray you, do not fall in love with me, 
For I am falser than vows made in wine : 

8 Proper ; again, for handsome. See page 40, note 9. 

9 To cry one mercy is to ask his pardon. A frequent usage. 

10 To be is another instance of the infinitive used gerundively. So that 
the meaning is, the ugly are most ugly when they add further ugliness by 
being scoffers. See page 43, note 16. 



SCENE v. AS YOU LIKE IT. 105 

Besides, I like you not. If you will know my house, 

Tis at the tuft of olives here hard by. — 

Will you go, sister ? — Shepherd, ply her hard. — 

Come, sister. — Shepherdess, look on him better, 

And be not proud : though all the world could see, 

None could be so abused in sight as he. 11 — 

Come, to our flock. [Exeunt Rosalind, Celia, and Corin 

Phe. Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might, — 
Who ever loved that loved not at first sight? 1 - 

Sil. Sweet Phebe, — 

Phe. Ha, what say'st thou, Silvius? 

Sil. Sweet Phebe, pity me. 

Phe. Why, I am sorry for thee, gentle Silvius. 

Sil. Wherever sorrow is, relief would be : 
If you do sorrow at my grief in love, 
By giving love, your sorrow and my grief 
Were both extermined. 

Phe. Thou hast my love : is not that neighbourly ? 

Sil. I would have you. 

Phe. Why, that were covetousness. 

Silvius, the time was that I hated thee ; 
And yet it is not that I bear thee love : 
But since that thou canst talk of love so well, 
Thy company, which erst was irksome to me, 
I will endure ; and I'll employ thee too : 
But do not look for further recompense 
Than thine own gladness that thou art employ'd. 

11 " If all men could see you, none but he could be so deceived as to 
think you beautiful." To abuse often has that sense. 

12 This line is from Marlowe's translation of Hero and Leander, which 
was not printed till 1598, though the author was killed in 1593. The poem 
was deservedly popular, and the words " dead shepherd " look as though 
Shakespeare remembered him with affection. 



I06 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT ill 

Sil. So holy and so perfect is my love, 
And I in such a poverty of grace, 
That I shall think it a most plenteous crop 
To glean the broken ears after the man 
That the main harvest reaps : loose now and then 
A scatter'd smile, and that I'll live upon. 

Phe. Know'st thou the youth that spoke to me erewhile ? 

Sil. Not very well, but I have met him oft ; 
And he hath bought the cottage and the bounds 
That the old carlot 13 once was master of. 

Phe. Think not I love him, though I ask for him : 
'Tis but a peevish boy : — yet he talks well ; — 
But what care I for words ? yet words do well, 
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear. 
It is a pretty youth : — not very pretty : — 
But, sure, he's proud ; and yet his pride becomes him . 
He'll make a proper man : the best thing in him 
Is his complexion j and faster than his tongue 
Did make offence, his eye did heal it up. 
He is not tall ; yet for his years he's tall : 
His leg is but so-so ; and yet 'tis well : 
There was a pretty redness in his lip, 
A little riper and more lusty red 

Than that mix'd in his cheek ; 'twas just the difference 
Betwixt the constant red and mingled damask. 14 
There be some women, Silvius, had they mark'd him 
In parcels 15 as I did, would have gone near 

13 Churl, carle, and carlot are all words of the same origin and meaning. 
The same person has already been described as " of a churlish disposition." 

14 Shakespeare has reference to the red rose, which is red all over alike, 
and the damask rose, in which various shades of colour are mingled. 

lo In parcels is in detail; part by part. 



scene i. AS YOU LIKE IT. IOJ 

To fall in love with him : but, for my part, 

I love him not, nor hate him not ; and yet 

I have more cause to hate him than to love him : 

For what had he to do to chide at me ? ,6 

He said mine eyes were black, and my hair black ; 

And, now I am remember'd, scorn'd at me : 

I marvel why I answer' d not again : 

But that's all one ; omittance is no quittance, 17 

I'll write to him a very taunting letter, 

And thou shalt bear it ; wilt thou Silvius ? 

Si'/. Phebe, with all my heart. 

Phe. I'll write it straight ; 

The matter's in my head and in my heart : 
I will be bitter with him and passing short. 
Go with me, Silvius. [Exeunt. 



ACT IV. 



Scene I. — The Forest of Arden. 

Enter Rosalind, Celia, and Jaques. 

Jaq. I pr'ythee, pretty youth, let me be better acquainted 
with thee. 

Ros. They say you are a melancholy fellow. 
Jaq. I am so ; I do love it better than laughing. 

Ros. Those that are in extremity of either are abominable 

16 That is, " What business had he to chide me? " 

17 Quittance is acquittance, release, or discliarge. The saying appears to 
have been proverbial. 



108 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT iv. 

fellows, and betray themselves to every modern l censure 
worse than drunkards. 

Jaq. Why, 'tis good to be sad and say nothing. 

Ros. Why, then 'tis good to be a post. 

Jaq. I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is 
emulation; nor the. musician's, which is fantastical; nor the 
courtier's, which is proud ; nor the soldier's, which is ambi- 
tious ; nor the lawyer's, which is politic ; nor the lady's, 
which is nice ; 2 nor the lover's, which is all these : but it 
is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, 3 
extracted from many objects, and, indeed, the sundry con- 
templation of my travels, on which my often rumination 
wraps me in a most humorous sadness. 

Ros. A traveller ! By my faith, you have great reason to 
be sad : I fear you have sold your own lands, to see other 
men's ; then, to have seen much, and to have nothing, is to 
have rich eyes and poor hands. 

Jaq. Yes, I have gain'd my experience. 

Ros. And your experience makes you sad : I had rather 
have a Fool to make me merry than experience to make me 
sad ; and to travel for it too ! 

Enter Orlando. 

Or/. Good day and happiness, dear Rosalind ! 

Jaq. Nay, then, God b' wi' you, an you talk in blank- 
verse ! 

Ros. Farewell, Monsieur Traveller : look, you lisp, and 
wear strange suits ; disable 4 all the benefits of your own 

1 Modern, again, for common or ordinary. See page 75, note 20. — Ex- 
tremity, in the line before, is excess or too much. 

2 Nice here means fastidious, dainty, or squeamish. Repeatedly so. 

3 Simples is the old word for herbs ; here it has the sense of elements. 

4 Disable in the sense of disparage, detract from, or depreciate. 



SCENE I. AS YOU LIKE IT. IOO, 

country ; be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide 
God for making you that countenance you are ; or I will 
scarce think you have swam in a gondola. 5 \Ejcit Jaques.] 
— Why, how now, Orlando ! where have you been all this 
while ? You a lover ! An you serve me such another trick, 
never come in my sight more. 

Or/. My fair Rosalind, I come within an hour of my 
promise. 

Ros. Break an hour's promise in love ! He that will di- 
vide a minute into a thousand parts, and break but a part of 
the thousandth part of a minute in the affairs of love, it may 
be said of him that Cupid hath clapp'd him o' the shoulder, 
but I'll warrant him heart-whole. 

Or/. Pardon me, dear Rosalind. 

Ros. Nay, an you be so tardy, come no more in my sight : 
I had as lief be woo'd of a snail. 

Or/. Of a snail! 

Ros. Ay, of a snail ; for, though he comes slowly, he car- 
ries his house on his head, — a better jointure, I think, than 
you can make a woman. Come, woo me, woo me ; for now 
I am in a holiday humour, and like enough to consent. 
What would you say to me now, an I were your very very 
Rosalind ? 

Or/. I would kiss before I spoke. 

Ros. Nay, you were better speak first ; and when you 
were gravell'd G for lack of matter, you might take occasion 
to kiss. Very good orators, when they are out, they will spit ; 



5 In Shakespeare's time, Venice was the common resort of travellers, as 
much as Paris is now. And of course all who went to Venice sailed or 
" swam in a gondola." 

6 This use of to gravel probably sprang from horses being lamed, as they 
sometimes are, by getting gravel-stones into their hoofs. 



r 10 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT TV. 

and for lovers, lacking (God warn us !) matter, the cleanliest 
shift is to kiss. 

Orl. How if the kiss be denied ? 

Ros. Then she puts you to entreaty, and there begins new 
matter. 

Orl. Who could be out, being before his beloved mistress ? 

Ros. Am not I your Rosalind ? 

Orl. I take some joy to say you are, because I would be 
talking of her. 

Ros. Well, in her person, I say, I will not have you. 

Orl. Then, in mine own person, I die. 

Ros. No, faith, die by attorney. 7 The poor world is almost 
six thousand years old, and in all this time there was not any 
man died in his own person, videlicet, in a love-cause. Troilus 
had his brains dash'd out with a Grecian club ; yet he did 
what he could to die before ; and he is one of the patterns of 
love. Leander, he would have lived many a fair year, though 
Hero had turn'd nun, if it had not been for a hot midsum- 
mer-night j for, good youth, he went but forth to wash him 
in the Hellespont, and, being taken with the cramp, was 
drown'd : and the foolish chroniclers of that age found it 
was — Hero of Sestos. 8 But these are all lies : men have 
died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not 
for love. 

Orl. I would not have my right Rosalind of this mind ; 
for, I protest, 9 her frown might kill me. 



7 That is, by deputy or substitute. A man's attorney is one who represents 
him or stands for him in his cause. 

8 Found, brought in, a verdict of drowned himself for love of Hero. 
The report of the old chroniclers or historians is implicitly compared to the 
finding of a coroner's inquest. 

9 Protest^ both verb and noun, is used for a strong affirmation. 



SCENE I. AS YOU LIKE IT. Ill 

Ros. By this hand, it will not kill a fly. But come, now 
I will be your Rosalind in a more coming-on disposition ; 10 
and ask me what you will, I will grant it. 

Orl. Then love me, Rosalind. 

Ros. Yes, faith, will I, Fridays and Saturdays and all. 

Orl. And wilt thou have me ? 

Ros. Ay, and twenty such. 

Orl. What say'st thou ? 

Ros. Are you not good ? 

Orl. I hope so. 

Ros. Why, then, can one desire too much of a good thing ? 
— Come, sister, you shall be the priest, and marry us. — Give 
me your hand, Orlando. — What do you say, sister ? 

Orl. Pray thee, marry us. 

Cel. I cannot say the words. 

Ros. You must begin, Will you, Orlando, — 

Cel. Go to. — Will you, Orlando, have to wife this Rosa 
lind? 

Orl. I will. 

Ros. Ay, but when ? 

Orl. Why, now ; as fast as she can marry us. 

Ros. Then you must say, / take thee, Rosalind, for wife. 

Orl. I take thee, Rosalind, for wife. 

Ros. I might ask you for your commission ; 1] but, — I do 
take thee, Orlando, for my husband: — there's a girl goes 
before the priest ; l ~ and, certainly, a woman's thought runs 
before her actions. 

Orl. So do all thoughts ; they are wing'd. 

10 A disposition more facile, ready, and encouraging. 

11 That is, your authority to perform the marriage ceremony. 

12 Goes faster than the priest, gets ahead of him in the service; alluding 
to her anticipating what should be said first by Celia. 



112 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT iv 

Ros. Now tell me how long you would have her, after you 
have possess'd her. 

Orl. For ever and a day. 

Ros. Say a day, without the ever. No, no, Orlando ; men 
are April when they woo, December when they're wed : maids 
are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when 
they are wives. I will be more jealous of thee than a Bar- 
bary cock-pigeon over his hen ; more clamorous than a parrot 
against rain ; more new-fangled than an ape ; more giddy in 
my desires than a monkey : I will weep for nothing, like 
Diana in the fountain ; ,3 and I will do that when you are dis- 
posed to be merry : I will laugh like a hyen, 14 and that when 
thou art inclined to sleep. 

Orl. But will my Rosalind do so? 

Ros. By my life, she will do as I do. 

Orl. O, but she is wise. 

Ros. Or else she could not have the wit to do this : the 
wiser, the way warder : make the doors 15 upon a woman's wit, 
and it will out at the casement ; shut that, and 'twill out at 
the key-hole ; stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the 
chimney. 

Orl. A man that had a wife with such a wit, he might 
say, Wit, whither wilt'! ' 16 

Ros. You shall never take her without her answer, unless 



13 Figures, and particularly that of Diana, with water conveyed through 
fhem, were anciently a frequent ornament of fountains. So in The City 
Match : " Now could I cry like any image in a fountain, which runs lamen- 
tations." Such an image of Diana, " with water prilling from her naked 
breast," was set up at the cross in Cheapside in 1596, according to Stowe. 

14 The bark of the hyaena was thought to resemble a loud laugh. 

15 Bar the doors, make them fast. 

16 « wit, whither wilt ? " is an old proverbial saying often met with in the 
early English writers. 



SCENE I. AS YOU LIKE IT. 113 

you take her without her tongue. O, that woman that 
cannot make her fault her husband's occasion, 17 let her 
never nurse her child herself, for she will breed it like a 
fool! 

Orl. For these two hours, Rosalind, I will leave thee. 

Ros. Alas, dear love, I cannot lack thee two hours ! 

Orl. I must attend the Duke at dinner : by two o'clock I 
will be with thee again. 

Ros. Ay, go your ways, go your ways : I knew what you 
would prove ; my friends told me as much, and I thought 
no less. That flattering tongue of yours won me : 'tis but 
one cast away, and so, — come, death ! Two o'clock is 
your hour? 

Orl. Ay, sweet Rosalind. 

Ros. By my troth, and in good earnest, and so God mend 
me, and by all pretty oaths that are not dangerous, if you 
break one jot of your promise, or come one minute behind 
your hour, I will think you the most pathetical 18 break- 
promise, and the most hollow lover, and the most unworthy 
of her you call Rosalind, that may be chosen out of the gross 
band of the unfaithful : therefore beware my censure, and 
keep your promise. 

Orl. With no less religion than if thou wert indeed my 
Rosalind : so, adieu. 

Ros. Well, Time is the old justice that examines all such 
offenders, and let Time try : adieu. [Exit Orlando. 

Cel. You have simply misused our sex in your love-prate : 
we must have your doublet and hose pluck'd over your head, 

17 This, if it be the right text, must mean " represent or make out that her 
husband was the occasion of her fault." See Critical Notes. 

18 Pathetical sometimes had the sense of impassioned. Rosalind seems 
to be using it playfully, or with mock-seriousness. 



I 14 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT IV. 

and show the world what the bird hath done to her own 
nest. 19 

Ros. O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst 
know how many fathom deep I am in love ! But it cannot 
be sounded : my affection hath an unknown bottom, like the 
bay of Portugal. 

Ccl. Or rather, bottomless ; that as fast as you pour affec- 
tion in, it runs out. 

Ros. No, that same wicked son of Venus, that was 
begot of thought, conceived of spleen, and born of madness ; 
that blind rascally boy, that abuses every one's eyes, because 
his own are out, let him be judge how deep I am in love. 
I tell thee, Aliena, I cannot be out of the sight of Orlando : 
I'll go find a shadow, 20 and sigh till he come. 

Cel. And I'll sleep. [Exeunt. 



Scene II. — Another Part of the Forest. 

Enter Jaques and Lords in the habit of Foresters, with a 
dead deer. 

Jaq. Which is he that killed the deer? 

1 Lord. Sir, it was I. 

Jaq. Let's present him to the Duke, like a Roman con- 
queror ; and it would do well to set the deer's horns upon 
his head, for a branch of victory. — Have you no song, 
forester, for this purpose ? 

2 Lord. Yes, sir. 



19 Referring to the old proverb, " "Pis an ill bird that fouls her own nest." 

20 Shadow for shade or shady place. So in The Tempest, iv. 1 : "And thy 
brown groves, whose shadozo the dismissed bachelor loves." 



SCENE in. AS YOU LIKE IT. H5 

Jaq. Sing it : 'tis no matter how it be in tune, so it make 
noise enough. 

Song. 

2 Lord. Wliat shall he have that kilVd the deer? 
His feather skin, and horns to wear. 

[They sing him home, the rest bearing this burden.] 

Take thou no scorn to wear the horn : 
It was a crest ere thou wast born ; 

Thy father 's father wore it, 

A?id thy father bore it : 
The horn, the horn, the lusty horn, 
Is not a thing to laugh to scorn. [Exeunt 



Scene III. — Another Part of the Forest 
Enter Rosalind and Celia. 

Ros. How say you now? Is it not past two o'clock? 
and here much l Orlando ! 

Cel. I warrant you, with pure love and troubled brain he 
hath ta'en his bow and arrows, and is gone forth — to sleep. 
Look, who comes here. 

Enter Sit.vius. 

Si I. My errand is to you, fair youth : 
My gentle Phebe bid me give you this : [Giving a letter, 

I know not the contents ; but, as I guess 
By the stern brow and waspish action 

1 Much is used ironically here ; as we still say, " A good deal you will," 
meaning " No you won't." 



1 1 6 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT IV. 

Which she did use as she was writing of it, 
It bears an angry tenour : pardon me ; 
I am but as a guiltless messenger. 

Ros. Patience herself would startle at this letter, 
And play the swaggerer ; bear this, bear all : 
She says I am not fair ; that I lack manners ; 
She calls me proud ; and that she could not love me, 
Were man as rare as phoenix. 'Od's my will ! 
Her love is not the hare that I do hunt : 
Why writes she so to me ? — Well, shepherd, well, 
This is a letter of your own device. 

Sil. No, I protest I know not the contents : 
Phebe did write it. 

Ros. Come, come, you're a fool, 

And turn'd into th' extremity of love. 
I saw her hand : she has a leathern hand, 
A freestone-colour'd hand ; I verily did think 
That her old gloves were on, but 'twas her hands : 
She has a housewife's hand ; but that's no matter. 
I say, she never did invent this letter ; 
This is a man's invention, and his hand. 

Sil. Sure, it is hers. 

Ros. Why, 'tis a boisterous and a cruel style, 
A style for challengers ; why, she defies me, 
Like Turk to Christian : woman's gentle brain 
Could not drop forth such giant-rude invention, 
Such Ethiop words, blacker in their effect 
Than in their countenance. Will you hear the letter? 

Sil. So please you, for I never heard it yet j 
Yet heard too much of Phebe's cruelty. 

Ros. She Phebes me : mark how the tyrant writes : 



SCENE III. AS YOU LIKE IT. 117 

[Reads.] Art thou god to shepherd turned, 

That a maiden's heart hath burned? — 

Can a woman rail thus ? 
Sil. Call you this railing? 
Ros. [Reads.] 

Why, thy godhead laid apart, 

Warr'st thou ivith a woman's heart ? — 

Did you ever hear such railing ? — 

[Reads.] Whiles the eye of man did woo me, 

That could do no vengeance to me. — 

Meaning me a beast. — 

[Reads.] If the scorn of your bright eyne 

Have power to raise such love in mine, 
Alack, in me what strange effect 
Would they work in mild aspect / 
Whiles you chid me, I did love ; 
How, then, might your prayers move / 
He that brings this love to thee 
Little knows this love in me : 
A?id by him seal up thy mind; 2 
Whether that thy youth and kind 3 
Will the faithful offer take 
Of me, and all that I can make ; 
Or else by him my love deny, 
And then Til study how to die. 

Sil. Call you this chiding ? 
Cel. Alas, poor shepherd ! 

2 " Seal up your answer, and send it back by him." 

8 Kind, agaia, in its radical sense of nature. See page 59, note 10. 



Il8 AS YOU LIKE IT. act iv. 

Ros. Do you pity him ? no, he deserves no pity. — Wilt 
thou love such a woman? What, to make thee an instru- 
ment, and play false strains upon thee ! not to be endured ! 
Well, go your way to her, — for I see love hath made thee 
a tame snake, — and say this to her : That, if she love me, I 
charge her to love thee ; if she will not, I will never have her, 
unless thou entreat for her. If you be a true lover, hence, 
and not a word ; for here comes more company. 

\_Exit Silvius. 
Enter Oliver. 

OIL Good morrow, fair ones : pray you, if you know, 
Where in the purlieus of this forest stands 
A sheep-cote fenced about with olive-trees ? 

Cel. West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom : 
The rank of osiers, by the murmuring stream, 
Left on your right hand, brings you to the place. 
But at this hour the house doth keep itself; 
There's none within. 

OIL If that an eye may profit by a tongue, 
Then should I know you by description ; 
Such garments and such years : The boy is fair, 
Of female favour, but bestows himself^ 
Like a right forester ; the woman low, 
And browner than her brother. Are not you 
The owners of the house I did inquire for ? 

Cel. It is no boast, being ask'd, to say we are. 

OIL Orlando doth commend him to you both ; 
And to that youth he calls his Rosalind 
He sends this bloody napkin ; 5 — are you he ? 



4 "Bestows himself" is bears himself, behaves, or appears. 

5 Napkin and handkerchief 'were often used interchangeably. 



scene III. AS YOU LIKE IT. 119 

Ros. I am : what must we understand by this ? 

OH. Some of my shame ; if you will know of me 
What man I am, and how, and why, and where 
This handkercher was stain'd. 

Cel. I pray you, tell it. 

OH. When last the young Orlando parted from you, 
He left a promise to return again 
Within an hour ; and, pacing through the forest, 
Chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy, 6 
Lo, what befell ! he threw his eye aside, 
And, mark, what object did present itself: 
Under an oak, whose boughs were moss'd with age, 
And high top bald with dry antiquity, 
A wretched ragged man, o'ergrown with hair, 
Lay sleeping on his back : about his neck 
A green and gilded snake had wreath'd itself, 
Who with her head, nimble in threats* approach'd 
The opening of his mouth ; but suddenly, 
Seeing Orlando, it unlink'd itself, 
And with indented glides did slip away 
Into a bush : under which bush's shade 
A lioness, with udders all drawn dry, 
Lay couching, head on ground, with catlike watch, 
When that the sleeping man should stir ; for 'tis 
The royal disposition of that beast 
To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead. 7 

6 To chew the cud was a common phrase, meaning to ruminate, or revolve 
in the mind. — The epithets sweet and bitter are in accordance with the old 
custom of describing love by contraries ; and we have many instances of 
fancy used for love. 

7 The bringing lions, serpents, palm-trees, rustic shepherds, and banished 
noblemen together in the Forest of Arden, is a strange piece of geographical 
license, which the critics have not failed to notice. I suspect the Poet knew 



120 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT iv. 

This seen, Orlando did approach the man, 
And found it was his brother, his elder brother. 

Cel. O, I have heard him speak of that same brother ; 
And he did render 8 him the most unnatural 
That lived 'mongst men. 

OIL And well he might so do, 

For well I know he was unnatural. 

Ros. But, to Orlando : Did he leave him there, 
Food to the suck'd and hungry lioness ? 

OIL Twice did he turn his back, and purposed so ; 
But kindness, nobler ever than revenge, 
And nature, stronger than his just occasion, 
Made him give battle to the lioness, 
Who quickly fell before him : in which hurtling 9 
From miserable slumber I awaked. 

Cel. Are you his brother? 

Ros. Was it you he rescued? 

Cel. Was't you that did so oft contrive to kill him ? 

OIL Twas I ; but 'tis not I : I do not shame 
To tell you what I was, since my conversion 
So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am. 

Ros. But, for the bloody napkin ? — 

OIL By-and-by. 

When from the first to last, betwixt us two, 
Tears our recountments had most kindly bathed, 
As, how I came into that desert place ; — 
In brief, he led me to the gentle Duke, 

well enough what he was about. The matter, however, was taken from 
Lodge's tale. 

8 Render here means report or represent. The Poet has it repeatedly in 
this sense, or in senses near akin to this. 

9 That is, jostling or clashing encounter. In Julius Ccesar we have " The 
noise of battle kurtkd in the air." 



scene ill. AS YOU LIKE IT. 121 

Who gave me fresh array and entertainment, 

Committing me unto my brother's love ; 

Who led me instantly unto his cave, 

There stripp'd himself; and here upon his arm 

The lioness had torn some flesh away, 

Which all this while had bled ; and now he fainted, 

And cried, in fainting, upon Rosalind. 

Brief, I recover'd him • bound up his wound ; 

And, after some small space, being strong at heart, 

He sent me hither, stranger as I am, 

To tell this story, that you might excuse 

His broken promise ; and to give this napkin, 

Dyed in his blood, unto the shepherd youth 

That he in sport doth call his Rosalind. 

Cel. Why, how now, Ganymede ! sweet Ganymede ! 

[ Rosalind fain Is. 

Oli. Many will swoon when they do look on blood. 

Cel. There is more in it. — Cousin ! — Ganymede ! 10 

Oli. Look, he recovers. 

Ros. I would I were at home. 

Cel. We'll lead you thither. — 

I pray you, will you take him by the arm ? 

Oli. Be of good cheer, youth. You a man ! you lack a 
man's heart. 

Ros. I do so, I confess it. Ah, sirrah, a body would think 
this was well counterfeited ! u I pray you, tell your brother 
how well I counterfeited. — Heigh-ho ! 

10 In her sudden fright, Celia is betrayed out of her assumed character, 
and calls out " Cousin," then instantaneously corrects herself, lest she should 
start some suspicion as to what she or Rosalind is. 

11 Rosalind is afraid of being discovered ; that her fainting will betray 
her ; and in her anxiety to keep up the show of a saucy, mannish youth, per- 
haps she slightly overacts the part in this instance. 



122 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT v. 

Oli. This was not counterfeit : there is too great testimony 
in your complexion, that it was a passion of earnest. 

Ros. Counterfeit, I assure you. 

Oli. Well, then, take a good heart, and counterfeit to be a 
man. ' 

Ros. So I do ; but, i 'faith, I should have been a woman 
by right. 

Cel. Come, you look paler and paler : pray you, draw 
homewards. — Good sir, go with us. 

Oli. That will I, for I must bear answer back 
How you excuse my brother, Rosalind. 

Ros. I shall devise something : but, I pray you, commend 
my counterfeiting to him. — Will you go ? [Exeunt. 



ACT V. 

Scene I. — The Forest of Arden. 
Enter Touchstone and Audrey. 

Touch. We shall find a time, Audrey ; patience, gentle 
Audrey. 

Aud. Faith, the priest was good enough, for all the old 
gentleman's saying. 

Touch. A most wicked Sir Oliver, Audrey, a most vile 
Martext. But, Audrey, there is a youth here in the forest 
lays claim to you. 

Aud. Ay, I know who 'tis : he hath no interest in me in 
the world : here comes the man you mean. 

Touch. It is meat and drink to me to see a clown ; by my 



,, SCENE I. AS YOU LIKE IT. 12 T, 

troth, we that have good wits have much to answer for j we 
shall be flouting; we cannot hold. 1 

Enter William. 

Will. Good even, Audrey. 

Aud. God ye good even, 2 William. 

• +JY*- ' ^ n< ^ S 00 ^ even to vou > s i r - 

* Touch. Good even, gentle friend. Cover thy head, cover 
, trly head ; nay, pr'ythee, be cover'd. 3 Flow old are you, friend? 
/ Will. Five-and-twenty, sir. 

Touch. A ripe age. Is thy name William ? 

Will. William, sir. 

Touch. A fair name. Wast born i' the forest here ? 

Will. Ay, sir, I thank God. 

Touch. Thank God ; — a good answer. Art rich? 

Will. Faith, sir, so-so. 

Touch. So-so is good, very good, very excellent good : — 
and yet it is not ; it is but so-so. Art thou wise? 

Will. Ay, sir, I have a pretty wit. 

Touch. Why, thou say'st well. I do now remember a 
saying, The fool doth think he is wise ; but the wise man 
knows himself to be afoot. The heathen philosopher, when 
he had a desire to eat a grape, would open his lips when he 
put it into his mouth ; meaning thereby, that grapes were 
made to eat, and lips to open. You do love this maid? 

Will. I do, sir. 

Touch. Give me your hand. Art thou learned? 

Will. No, sir. 

1 " Cannot restrain or hold in our wits." 

2 " God give you good even;" the original salutation in the process of 
abbreviation into " good even," or " good evening." 

3 William is standing with his hat off, in token of respect. 



124 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT v. 

Touch. Then learn this of me : To have, is to have ; for 
it is a figure in rhetoric, that drink, being poured out of a 
cup into a glass, by filling the one doth empty the other \ for 
all your writers do consent that ipse is he : now, you are not 
ipse, for I am he. 

Will. Which he, sir? 

Touch. He, sir, that must marry this woman. Therefore, 
you clown, abandon — which is in the vulgar leave — the 
society — which in the boorish is company — of this female, 
— which in the common is woman ; which together is, aban- 
don the society of this female ; or, clown, thou perishest ; or, 
to thy better understanding, diest ; to wit, I kill thee, make 
thee away, translate thy life into death, thy liberty into bond- 
age. I will deal in poison with thee, or in bastinado, or in 
steel ; I will bandy with thee in faction ; 4 I will o'er-run 
thee with policy ; 5 I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways : 
therefore tremble, and depart. 

Aud. Do, good William. 

Will. God rest you merry, 6 sir. [Exit. 

Enter Corin. 

Cor. Our master and mistress seek you ; come, away, 
away ! 

Touch. Trip, Audrey, trip, Audrey. — I attend, I attend. 

[Exeunt. 

4 " Fight against thee with conspiracies." 

5 " Circumvent thee with cunning ; " the art of politicians. 

6 " God keep you merry," or " let you continue merry." 



SCENE II. AS YOU LIKE IT. 1 25 

Scene II. — Another Part of the Forest 
Enter Orlando and Oliver. 

Or/. Is't possible that, on so little acquaintance, you 
should like her? that, but seeing, you should love her? and, 
loving, woo ? and, wooing, she should grant ? and will you 
persever to enjoy her? 

Oli. Neither call the giddiness of it in question, the pov- 
erty of her, the small acquaintance, my sudden wooing, nor 
her sudden consenting ; but say with me, I love Aliena ; 
say with her, that she loves me ; consent with both, that we 
may enjoy each other : it shall be to your good ; for my 
father's house, and all the revenue that was old Sir Roland's, 
will I estate upon you, and here live and die a shepherd. 

Or/. You have my consent. Let your wedding be to- 
morrow : thither will I invite the Duke, and all's contented 
followers. Go you and prepare Aliena ; for, look you, here 
comes my Rosalind. 

Enter Rosalind. 

Ros. God save you, brother. 

Oli. And you, fair sister. 1 [Exit. 

Ros. O, my dear Orlando, how it grieves me to see thee 
wear thy heart in a scarf ! 

Or/. It is my arm. 

Ros. I thought thy heart had been wounded with the 
claws of a lion. 

Or/. Wounded it is, but with the eyes of a lady. 

1 Oliver has before this learnt from Celia the whole secret of who Gany- 
mede and Aliena are. Hence he calls Rosalind " sister " here, well knowing 
that Orlando will understand him as referring to the character she is sus- 
taining in her masked courtship. 



126 AS YOU LIKE IT. 



ACT V. 



Ros. Did your brother tell you how I counterfeited to 
swoon when he show'd me your handkercher ? 

Orl. Ay, and greater wonders than that. 

Ros. O, I know where you are : — nay, 'tis true : there 
was never any thing so sudden, but the fight of two rams, 
and Caesar's thrasonical 2 brag of — / came, saw, and over- 
came : for your brother and my sister no sooner met, but 
they look'd ; no sooner look'd, but they loved ; no sooner 
loved, but they sigh'd ; no sooner sigh'd, but they ask'd one 
another the reason ; no sooner knew the reason, but they 
sought the remedy : and in these degrees have they made a 
pair of stairs to marriage, which they will climb incontinent : 3 
they are in the very wrath of love, and they will together ; 
clubs cannot part them. 4 

Orl. They shall be married to-morrow ; and I will bid the 
Duke to the nuptial. But, O, how bitter a thing it is to look 
into happiness through another man's eyes ! By so much the 
more shall I to-morrow be at the height of heart-heaviness, 
by how much I shall think my brother happy in having what 
he wishes for. 

Ros. Why, then to-morrow I cannot serve your turn for 
Rosalind ? 

Orl. I can live no longer by thinking. 

2 Thrasonical is from Thraso, the name of a bragging, vain-glorious 
soldier in one of Terence's comedies. — The famous dispatch, veni,vidi, 
vici, which Julius Caesar was alleged to have sent to Rome, announcing 
his great and swift victory in the battle of Zela in Pontus, is the matter 
referred to. 

3 Incontinent here signifies immediately, without any stay. 

4 It was a common custom in Shakespeare's time, on the breaking out of 
a fray, to call out, " clubs, clubs," to part the combatants. It was the popu- 
lar cry to call forth the London apprentices. So, in The Renegado, i. 3 : " If 
he were in London among the- duos, up went his heels for striking of a 
prentice." The matter is well set forth in Scott's Fortunes of Nigel. 



scene II. AS YOU LIKE IT. \2J 

Ros. I will weary you, then, no longer with idle talking. 
Know of me, then, — for now I speak to some purpose, — 
that I know you are a gentleman of good conceit : 5 I speak 
not this, that you should bear a good opinion of my knowl- 
edge, insomuch I say I know you are ; neither do I labour 
for a greater esteem than may in some little measure draw a 
belief from you, to do yourself good, and not to grace me. 
Believe, then, if you please, that I can do strange things : I 
have, since I was three year old, conversed with a magician, 
most profound in his art, and yet not damnable. 6 If you do 
love Rosalind so near the heart as your gesture cries it out, 
when your brother marries Aliena, shall you marry her : I 
know into what straits of fortune she is driven ; and it is not 
impossible to me, if it appear not inconvenient to you, to set 
her before your eyes to-morrow human as she is, 7 and with- 
out any danger. 

Or/. Speak'st thou in sober meaning? 

Ros. By my life, I do ; which, I tender dearly, though I 
say I am a magician. 8 Therefore, put you in your best array, 
bid your friends ; for, if you will be married to-morow, you 
shall ; and to Rosalind, if you will. Look, here comes a 
lover of mine, and a lover of hers. 

5 Conceit was used of all the forms of mental action, and always in a good 
sense. Here it means se?tse, judgment, or understanding. Wit, also, was 
used in a similar largeness of meaning. 

6 In Shakespeare's time, the practice of magic was held to be criminal, 
or damnable, and was punishable with death. Rosalind means that her pre- 
ceptor, though a magician, used magic only for honest and charitable ends ; 
such a pure and benevolent magician, perhaps, as the Poet shows us in 
Prospero. 

7 That is, Rosalind her very self, and not a mere phantom of her, conjured 
up by magic rites, such as it was dangerous to practise. 

8 She alludes to the danger in which her avowal of practising magic had 
it been serious, would have involved her. 



128 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT V, 

Enter Silvius and Phebe. 

Phe. Youth, you have done me much ungentleness, 
To show the letter that I writ to you. 

Ros. I care not, if I have ; it is my study 
To seem despiteful and ungentle to you. 
You are there follow'd by a faithful shepherd : 
Look upon him, love him ; he worships you. 

Phe. Good shepherd, tell this youth what 'tis to love. 

Sil. It is to be all made of sighs and tears ; 
And so am I for Phebe. 

Phe. And I for Ganymede. 

Orl. And I for Rosalind. 

Ros. And I for no woman. 

Sil. It is to be all made of faith and service ; 
And so am I for Phebe. 

Phe. And I for Ganymede. 

Orl. And I for Rosalind. 

Ros. And I for no woman. 

Sil. It is to be all made of fantasy, 
All made of passion, and all made of wishes ; 
All adoration, duty, and observance, 
All humbleness, all patience, and impatience. 
All purity, all trial, all endurance ; 
And so am I for Phebe. 

Phe. And so am I for Ganymede. 

Orl. And so am I for Rosalind. 

Ros. And so am I for no woman. 

Phe. [To Ros.] If this be so, why blame you me to love 
you? 9 

9 " For loving you.' Still another gerundial infinitive. 



SCEKE II. AS YOU LIKE IT. 129 

Sil [To Phe.] If this be so, why blame you me to love 
you? 

On. If this be so, why blame you me to love you ? 

Ros. Who do you speak to, Why blame yon me to love yo7i ? 

Orl To her that is not here, nor doth not hear. 

Ros. Pray you, no more of this ; 'tis like the howling of 
Irish wolves against the Moon. 10 — \_To Sil.] I will help you, 
if I can : — [To Phe.] I would love you, if I could. — To- 
morrow meet me all together. — [To Phe.] I will marry you, 
if ever I marry woman, and I'll be married to-morrow : — 
[71? Orl.] I will satisfy you, if ever I satisfy man, and you 
shall be married to-morrow : — \_To Sil.] I will content you, 
if what pleases you contents you, and you shall be married 
to-morrow. — [To Orl.] As you love Rosalind, meet: — 
[To Sil.] As you love Phebe, meet : and as I love no woman, 
I'll meet. — So, fare you well : I have left you commands. 

Sil. I'll not fail, if I live. 

Phe. Nor I. 

Orl. Nor I. [Exeunt 

10 This howling was probably rather monotonous and dismal. So in 
Lodge's tale : " I tell thee, Montanus, in courting Phoebe thou barkest with 
the wolves of Syria against the moon." Wolves held their ground in Ire- 
land until a recent period. In Spenser's View of the State of Ireland, 1596, 
we have the following: " Also the Scythians said, that they were once every 
year turned into wolves, and so is it written of the Irish : though Mr. Cam- 
den in a better sense doth suppose it was a disease, called Lycanthropia, so 
named of the wolf." 



I30 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT V. 

Scene III. — Another Part of the Forest. 
Enter Touchstone and Audrey. 

Touch. To-morrow is the joyful day, Audrey ; to-morrow 
will we be married. 

And. I do desire it with all my heart ; and I hope it is no 
dishonest desire, to desire to be a woman of the world. 1 
Here come two of the banish'd Duke's pages. 

Enter two Pages. 

/ Page. Well met, honest gentleman. 

Touch. By my troth, well met. Come, sit, sit, and a song. 

2 Page. We are for you : sit i' the middle. 

/ Page. Shall we clap into't roundly, 2 without hawking, 
or spitting, or saying we are hoarse, which are only the pro- 
logues to a bad voice ? 

2 Page. I'faith, i'faith ; and both in a tune, like two 
gipsies on a horse. 

Song. 

// was a lover and his lass, 

With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonmo, 3 

1 "To be a woman of the world" was to be a married woman, as op- 
posed to being a woman of the Church, which implied a vow of perpetual 
celibacy. So we have the phrase of "going to the world," for getting mar- 
ried, in contradistinction to becoming a monk or a nun. See Much Ado, 
page 51, note 29. 

2 " Shall we strike into it directly? " Ro nd, in the sense of downright or 
straightforward, occurs very often. 

3 Coverdale, in the Preface to his Holy Psalms, speaks of these meaning- 
less burdens of songs : " And if women, sitting at their rocks, or spinning at 
the wheels, had none other songs to pass their time withal, than such as 
Moses* sister, Elkanah's wife, Debora, and Mary the mother of Christ, have 
sung before them, they should be better occupied than with hey nony twny, 
hey troly loly, and such like phantasies." 



SCENE in. AS YOU LIKE IT. I3I 

That o'er the green corn-field did pass 
In spring-time, the only pretty ring-time* 
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding: 
Sweet lovers love the Spring. 

Between the acres of the rye, 

With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino, 

These pretty country-folks would lie 

In spring-time, <Srv. 

This carol they began that hour, 

With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino, 

How that a life was but a flower 

In spring-time, &c. 

And thc?-efore take the present time, 
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino; 
For love is crowned with the prime 
I?i spring-time, <5rv. 

Touch. Truly, young gentlemen, though there was nr 
great matter 5 in the ditty, yet the note was very untimeable. 

1 Page. You are deceived, sir : we kept time, we lost not 
our time. 

Touch. By my troth, yes ; I count it but time lost to hear 
such a foolish song. God b' wi' G you ; and God mend your 
voices ! — Come, Audrey. \_Exeunt. 



4 Ring-time is time of marriage, or of making love ; probably so called 
from the use of rings in the plighting of troth. 

5 Matter here stands, apparently, for sense or meaning. 

6 God b' ' wi' you is an old contraction of God be with you, which was used 
a good deal in Shakespeare's time, and has occurred twice before in this 
play ; on page 88 and page 108. The phrase has been still further contracted 
into good bye. 



132 AS YOU LIKE IT. 



Scene IV. — Another Part of the Forest. 

Enter Duke Senior, Amiens, Jaques, Orlando, Oliver, and 

Celia. 

Duke S. Dost thou believe, Orlando, that the boy 
Can do all this that he hath promised? 

Or/. I sometimes do believe, and sometimes do not ; 
As those that fear to hope, and know they fear. 1 

Enter Rosalind, Silvius, and Phebe. 

Ros. Patience once more, whiles our compact is urged. — 
[ To the Duke.] You say, if I bring in your Rosalind, 
You will bestow her on Orlando here ? 

Duke S. That would I, had I kingdoms to give with her. 

Ros. [To Orlando.] And you say, you will have her, 
when I bring her? 

Or/. That would I, were I of all kingdoms king. 

Ros. [To Phebe.] You say, you'll marry me, if I be 
willing ? 

Phe. That will I, should I die the hour after. 

Ros. But if you do refuse to marry me, 
You'll give yourself to this most faithful shepherd? 

Phe. So is the bargain. 

Ros. \To Silvius.] You say, that you'll have Phebe, if 
she will? 

Si/. Though to have her and death were both one thing. 

Ros. I've promised to make all this matter even. 



1 The meaning appears to be, " As those that fear lest they may believe 
a thing because they wish it true, and at the same time know that this fear 
is no better ground of action than their hope." Who has not sometime 
caught himself in a similar perplexity of hope and fear ? 



scene IV. AS YOU LIKE IT. 1 33 

Keep you your word, O duke, to give your daughter ; — 

You yours, Orlando, to receive his daughter : — 

Keep your word, Phebe, that you'll marry me, 

Or else, refusing me, to wed this shepherd : — 

Keep your word, Silvius, that you'll marry her, 

If she refuse me : — and from hence I go, 

To make these doubts all even. [Exeunt Rosalind and Celia 

Duke S. I do remember in this shepherd boy 
Some lively touches of my daughter's favour. 

Or/. My lord, the first time that I ever saw him 
Methought he was a brother to your daughter : 2 
But, my good lord, this boy is forest-born, 
And hath been tutor'd in the rudiments 
Of many desperate studies by his uncle, 
Whom he reports to be a great magician, 
Obscured in the circle of this forest. 

Jaq. There is, sure, another flood toward, and these cou- 
ples are coming to the ark. Here comes a pair of very 
strange beasts, which in all tongues are called fools. 

Enter Touchstone and Audrey. 

Touch. Salutation and greeting to you all ! 3 
Jaq. Good my lord, bid him welcome : this is the motley 

minded gentleman that I have so often met in the forest : he 

hath been a courtier, he swears. 

Touch. If any man doubt that, let him put me to my pur- 

2 This aptly shows the danger Rosalind has been in, of being discovered 
notwithstanding her disguise. Doubtless, we have all found how one face 
will sometimes remind us of another by tricks of association too subtle for 
our tracing; so that we seem at the same time to know and not to know the 
stranger. 

3 Touchstone is humorously affecting the stately manners and language 
of the Court. 



134 AS Y0U LIKE IT - ACT v< 

gation. 4 I have trod a measure ; 5 I have flatter 'd a lady ; 1 
have been politic with my friend, smooth with mine enemy ; 
I have undone three tailors ; 6 I have had four quarrels, and 
like to have fought one. 

Jaq. And how was that ta'en up ? 7 

Touch. Faith, we met, and found the quarrel was upon 
the Seventh Cause. 8 

Jaq. How, the Seventh Cause ? — Good my lord, like this 
fellow. 

Duke S. I like him very well. 

Touch. God 'ild you, sir ; I desire you of the like. 9 I 
press in here, sir, amongst the rest of the country copulatives, 
to swear, and to forswear, according as marriage binds and 



4 " Put me under oath, make me swear to the truth of the matter." Peo- 
ple were often called upon or permitted \o purge, that is, clear themselves of 
imputed guilt by thus affirming their innocence under oath. Sometimes a 
man got others to swear with him, who were called compurgators. See page 
49, note 4. 

5 The measure was a grave, solemn dance, with a slow and measured step, 
somewhat like a minuet, and therefore well comporting with the dignity of 
the Court. See Much Ado, page 42, note 5. 

6 Smooth was often used in the sense of flattery. So in Richard III., i. 
3: " I cannot flatter, and speak fair, smile- in men's faces, smooth, deceive, 
and cog." Touchstone means to imply, that to use sharp practice on one's 
friend, to cajole and beguile one's enemy, and to bankrupt one's tailors by 
running up huge accounts and leaving them unpaid, are characteristics of 
Courts and courtiers. 

7 Taken up is made up ; that is, composed, settled. 

8 This means, apparently, that the quarrel had proceeded through six 
degrees from the original ground or starting-point, and so had come to the 
seventh degree, the " Lie Direct " where nothing but an //could save the par- 
ties from the necessity of fighting it out. In Romeo and Juliet, ii. 4, Tybalt 
is described as "a gentleman of the very first house, — of the first and 
second cause" ; that is, one who will fight on the slightest provocation. 

9 This mode of speech was common. See The Merchant, page 177. 
note 54. — " God 'ild you " is " God reward you." See page 98, note 9, 



scene iv. AS YOU LIKE IT. 1 35 

blood breaks. 10 A poor virgin, sir, an ill-favour'd thing, 
sir, but mine own; 11 a poor humour of mine, sir, to take 
that that no man else will : rich honesty dwells like a miser, 
sir, in a poor house ; as your pearl in your foul oyster. 12 

Duke S. By my faith, he is very swift and sententious. 

Touch. According to the fool's bolt, 13 sir, and such dulcet 
diseases. 14 

Jaq. But, for the Seventh Cause \ how did you find the 
quarrel on the Seventh Cause ? 

Touch. Upon a lie seven times removed; — bear your 
body more seeming, 15 Audrey ; — as thus, sir : I did dislike 
the cut of a certain courtier's beard : he sent me word, if I 
said his beard was not cut well, he was in the mind it was : 
this is call'd the Retort Courteous. If I sent him word again, 
it was not well cut, he would send me word, he cut it to 
please himself: this is call'd the Quip Modest. If again, it 



10 Blood was much used for passion or impulse. The meaning seems to 
be, that his being forsworn will depend on which of the two proves the 
strongest, his fidelity to his marriage-vows, or the temptations of his blood. 
Such is Heath's interpretation. 

11 Touchstone here just hits the very pith of the matter. It is by such 
strokes as this that the Poet keeps the man, Fool though he be, bound up 
fresh and warm with our human sympathies. Celia gives the key-note of 
his real inside character, when she says, i. 3, " He'll go along o'er the wide 
world with me." 

12 The personal pronouns were often used thus in an indefinite sense, 
for any or a. So in Hamlet, iii. 7 : " Your fat king and your lean beggar is 
but variable service," &c. 

13 The bolt was a short, thick, blunt arrow, for shooting near objects, and 
requiring little practice or skill. There was an old proverb, " A fool's bolt 
is soon shot." In the line before, swift is quick-witted, and sententious is 
full of pithy sayings. 

14 The sense of this probably lies in the circumstance of its being mean' 
for nonsense ; perhaps for what Barrow calls " acute nonsense." 

13 In a more seemly or more becoming manner. 



I36 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT V. 

was not well cut, he disabled 16 my judgment : this is call'd 
the Reply Churlish. If again, it was not well cut, he would 
answer, I spak not true : this is call'd the Reproof Valiant. 
If again, it was not well cut, he would say, I lied : this is 
call'd the Countercheck Quarrelsome : and so to the Lie 
Circumstantial and the Lie Direct. 

Jaq. And how oft did you say, his beard was not well 
cut? 

Touch. I durst go no further than the Lie Circumstantial, 
nor he durst not give me the Lie Direct ; and so we meas- 
ured swords, and parted. 

Jaq. Can you nominate in order now the degrees of the 
lie? 

Touch. O sir, we quarrel in print, by the book ; as you 
have books for good manners : ,7 I will name you the de- 
grees. The first, the Retort Courteous ; the second, the 
Quip Modest ; the third, the Reply Churlish ; the fourth, the 
Reproof Valiant ; the fifth, the Countercheck Quarrelsome ; 
the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance ; the seventh, the Lie 
Direct. All these you may avoid, but the Lie Direct ; and 
you may avoid that too with an if. I knew when seven jus- 

16 Disabled, again, for disqualified or disparaged. See page 83, note 4. 

17 The book alluded to is entitled, " Of Honour and Honourable Quar- 
rels, by Vincentio Saviolo," 1594. The first part of which is " A Discourse 
most necessary for all Gentlemen that have in regard their Honours, touch- 
ing the giving and receiving the Lie, whereupon the Duello and the Combat 
in divers Forms doth ensue ; and many other inconveniences for lack only 
of true knowledge of Honour, and the right Understanding of Words, which 
here is set down." The eight following chapters are on the Lie and its 
various circumstances, much in the order of Touchstone's enumeration; 
and in the chapter of Conditional Lies, speaking of the particle if, he says, 
"Conditional lies be such as are given conditionally, as if a man should say 
or write these words : ' if thou hast said that I have offered my lord abuse, 
thou liest; or //thou sayest so hereafter, thou shalt lie."' 



SCENE IV. AS YOU LIKE IT. 137 

tices could not take up a quarrel ; but, when the parties were 
met themselves, one of them thought but of an if, as, If you 
said so, the?i I said so ; and they shook tends, and swore 
brothers. Your if is the only peacemaker ; much virtue in if. 

Jaq. Is not this a rare fellow, my lord? he's as good at 
any thing, and yet a Fool. 

Duke S. He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, 18 and, 
under the presentation of that, he shoots his wit. 

Still music. Enter Hymen, 19 leading Rosalind in woman's 
clothes ; and Celia. 
Hym. Then is there mirth in Heaven, 
When earthly things made even 

Atone together. 20 — 
Good Duke, receive thy daughter : 
Hymen from Heaven brought her, 

Yea, brought her hither, 
That thou mightst join her hand with his 
Whose heart within her bosom is. 

Ros. \_To the Duke.] To you I give myself, for I am 
yours. — 
[To Orlando.] To you I give myself, for I am yours. 
Duke S. If there be truth in sight, you are my daughter. 
Orl. If there be truth in shape, you are my Rosalind. 
Phe. If sight and shape be true, 
Why, then, — my love adieu ! 

18 A stalking-horse was a piece of stretched cloth or canvas, with a horse 
painted on it, which the fowler carried before him to deceive the game. 
See Much Ado, page 60, note 7. 

19 Rosalind is imagined by the rest of the company to be brought by en- 
chantment, and is therefore introduced by a supposed aerial being in the 
character of Hymen. 

20 Accord, or agree together. This is the old sense of the phrase. 



I38 AS YOU LIKE IT. ACT V. 

Ros. [To the Duke.] I'll have no father, if you be not he : — 
[To Orlando.] I'll have no husband, if you be not he : — 
[To Phebe.] Nor ne'er wed woman, if you be not she. 
Hym. Peace, ho ! I bar confusion : 
Tis I must make conclusion 
Of these most strange events : 
Here's eight that must take hands 
To join in Hymen's bands, 
If truth holds true contents. 21 — 

\_To Orl. and Ros.] You and you no cross shall part : — 

\_To Oli. and Cel.] You and you are heart in heart : — 

[To Phebe.] You to his love must accord, 
Or have a woman to your lord : — 

[To Touch, and Aud.] You and you are sure together, 
As the Winter to foul weather. 
Whiles a wedlock-hymn we sing, 
Feed yourselves with questioning ; 22 
That reason wonder may diminish, 
How thus we met, and these things finish. 

Song. 

Wedding is great Juno 's erown : 
O blessed bond of board and bed ! 
' Tis Hymen peoples every town ; 
High wedlock, then, be honoured : 
Ho?iour, high honour, and renown, 
To Hymen, god of every town / 
Duke S. O my dear niece, welcome thou art to me, 

21 Meaning, apparently, if there be truth in truth itself. 

22 Questioning for conversing or conversation. So question has occurred 
before. See page 100, note 3. 



scene IV. AS YOU LIKE IT. 1 39 

Even daughter-welcome, 23 in no less degree ! 

Phe. \To Sil.] I will not eat my word, now thou art mine ; 
Thy faith my fancy to thee doth combine. 

Enter Jaques de Bois. 

Jag. de B. Let me have audience for a word or two : 
I am the second son of old Sir Roland, 
That bring these tidings to this fair assembly : 
Duke Frederick, hearing how that every day 
Men of great worth resorted to this forest, 
Address'd 24 a mighty power; which were on foot, 
In his own conduct, 25 purposely to take 
His brother here, and put him to the sword : 
And to the skirts of this wild wood he came ; 
Where meeting with an old religious man, 
After some question 26 with him, was converted 
Both from his enterprise and from the world ; 
His crown bequeathing to his banish' d brother, 
And all their lands restored to them again 
That were with him exiled. This to be true, 
I do engage my life. 

Duke S. Welcome, young man ; 

Thou offer'st fairly to thy brothers' wedding : 
To one, his lands withheld ; and to the other, 27 
A land itself at large, a potent dukedom. 

23 That is, as welcome as a daughter. 

24 Here, as usual, address' d is prepared or made ready. 

25 " In his own conduct" is under his own leading or command. 

2 6 Question, again, for conversation or talk. See note 22. 

2 ? The one is Oliver, whose lands had been seized by Frederick ; the other 
is Orlando, who with Rosalind is to inherit the dukedom, she being the old 
Duke's only child. The sense of offer st is continued through these two 
lines. 



I40 AS YOU LIKE II. act v 

First, in this forest, let us do those ends 

That here were well begun and well begot ; 

And, after, every of this happy number, 

That have endured shrewd 28 days and nights with us, 

Shall share the good of our returned fortune, 

According to the measure of their states. 29 

Meantime forget this new-fall'n dignity, 

And fall into our rustic revelry. — 

Play, music ! — and you, brides and bridegrooms all, 

With measure heap'd in joy, to th' measures fall. 

Jaq. Sir, by your patience. — If I heard you rightly, 
The Duke hath put on a religious life, 30 
And thrown into neglect the pompous Court? 

Jaq. de B. He hath. 

Jaq. To him will I : out of these convertites 31 
There is much matter to be heard and learn'd. — 
[ To the Duke.] You to your former honour I bequeath ; 
Your patience and your virtue well deserve it : — 
\_To Orl.] You to a love that your true faith doth merit : - 
[ To Oli.] You to your land, and love, and great allies : — 
\To Sil.] You to a long and well-deserved bed : — 
[ To Touch.] And you to wrangling ; for thy loving voyage 
Is but for two months victuall'd. — So, to your pleasures : 
I am for other than for dancing-measures. 

Duke S. Stay, Jaques, stay. 

28 Shrewd is sharp, piercing, and was formerly applied as variously as 
keen is now. So in Hamlet : " The air bites shrewdly." 

29 States for estates. The two words were used interchangeably. 

30 That is, put on a monk's or hermit's dress, the badge of a religious 
life. So, before, " an old religious man," meaning a member of a religious 
order. — Pompous, next line, is ceremonious, full of pomp. 

31 Convertites for converts. So in Cotgrave's French Dictionary : " Con- 
vers : A convertite ; one that hath turned to the Faith ; or is won unto 
religious profession ; or hath abandoned a loose to follow a godly, a vicious 
to lead a virtuous life." 



SCENE IV. 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 14* 



Jaq. To see no pastime I : what you would have 
I'll stay to know at your abandon'd cave. [Exit 

Du ke S. Proceed, proceed : we will begin these rites, 
As we do trust they'll end, in true delights. [A dance 

EPILOGUE. 

Ros. It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue ; 
but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the pro- 
logue. If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 3 * 3 'tis true 
that a good play needs no epilogue : yet to good wine they 
do use good bushes ; and good plays prove the better by the 
help of good epilogues. What a case am I in, then, that am 
neither a good epilogue, nor cannot insinuate with you in 
the behalf of a good play ! I am not furnish'd like a beggar, 
therefore to beg will not become me : my way is, to conjure 
you ; and I'll begin with the women. I charge you, O wo- 
men, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this 
play as please you : and I charge you, O men, for the love 
you bear to women, (as I perceive by your simpering, none 
of you hates them,) that between you and the women the 
play may please. If I were a woman, 33 I would kiss as many 
of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked 
me, 34 and breaths that I defied not : 35 and, I am sure, as 
many as have good beards, or good faces, or sweet breaths, 
will, for my kind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me farewell. 

[Exeunt, 

32 It was formerly the general custom in England to hang a bush of ivy 
at the door of a vintner : there was a classical propriety in this ; ivy being 
sacred to Bacchus. 

33 The parts of women were performed by men or boys in Shakespeare's 
time. The English stage had no actresses till after 1660. 

84 The Poet often uses like in the sense of please ; a common usage. 
3- r > To defy, in old English, is to renounce, to repudiate, or abjure. The 
Poet has it repeatedly in that sense. See The Merchant, page 159, note 7. 



CRITICAL NOTES. 



Act i., Scene i. 

Page 29. As I remember, Adam, it ivas upon this fashion, — he be- 
queathed me by will but poor a thousand crowns ; and, as thou say'st, 
charged my brother, on his blessing, &c. — The original prints "it was 
upon this fashion bequeathed me," &c.; thus leaving charged without 
any subject, and his without any antecedent. Doubtless the pronoun 
he dropped out in the printing or the transcribing. A little further on, 
Orlando says to Oliver, " My father charged you in his will to give me 
good education." Ritson's correction. 

P. 31. What prodigal's portion have I spent ? — The original has 
" What prodigall portion." Seymour's correction. 

P. 33. Cha. Good morrow to your Worship. 

Oli. Good morrow, Monsieur Charles. What's the nezv news 
at the neiv Court ? — So Walker. The original has " OH. Good 
Mounsier Charles: what's the new newes," &c. The salutation of 
Charles, " Good morrotu," renders it all but certain that ?norrow was 
left out of Oliver's reply by mistake. 

P. 33. There's no news at the new Court, sir, but the old news. — 
So Lettsom, and with evident propriety. The old text omits new 
before Court. 

P. 34. Oli. Can you tell if Rosalind, the old Duke's daughter, be 
banished with her father ? 

Cha. O, no ; for the new Duke's daughter, her cousin, so 
loves her, &c. — So Hanmer and Collier's second folio. The original 
lacks the words old and new before Duke's. 

143 



144 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

P. 35. I tell thee, Charles, it is the stubbornest young fellow of 
France ; &c. — The folio reads " He tell thee," &c. 



Act i., Scene 2. 

P. 36. I show more mirth than I am mistress of; and ' ivould you yet 
I were merrier ? — The third /is wanting in the original. Inserted by 
Rowe. 

P. 38. Those that she makes honest, she makes very ill-favoured. — 
The original has " very illfavouredly" 

P. 38. Indeed, then is Fortune too hard for Nature, when she makes, 
&c. — So Dyce. The old text reads " Indeed, there is Fortune," <Src. 

P. 40. Le Beau. — three proper young ?nen, of excellent growth and 
presence, with bills on their necks, — 

Ros. Be it known unto all men by these presents. — In the 
original the words, " with bills on their necks," begin Rosalind's 
speech. Farmer assigned them to Le Beau ; and it is plain enough 
that giving them to Rosalind quite defeats the humour of the passage. 
See foot-note 10. 

P. 41. But is there any else longs to feel this broken music in his 
sides ? — Instead of feel, the original has see, which some would change 
to set. Walker notes upon the passage, — " Feel, surely ; and so John- 
son conjectures." 

P. 42. There is such odds in the men. — So Hanmer. The original 
has " such odds in the man " ; which is not English, and never was, 
though some recent editors have tried hard to defend it. 

P. 42. Le Beau. Monsieur the challenger, the Princesses call for 
you. 

Orl. / attend them with all respect and duty. — So Theo- 
bald. The original has Princess calls. The plural them in Orlando's 



CRITICAL NOTES. 1 45 

reply shows Theobald's reading to be probably right. It is true, only 
one of the ladies, Celia, has expressly called for him ; but she is un- 
derstood to speak for them both ; and the Duke has just said, " Speak 
to him, ladies." The objections that have been urged against the 
change seem to me decidedly martinetish. 

P. 43. If you saw yourself ivith our eyes, or knew yourself with our 
judgment, the fear of your adventure would, &c. — So Hanmer, 
Walker, and Collier's second folio. The original reads " with your 
eyes," and " with your judgment." Perhaps this is one of the many 
instances of words repeated by mistake from contextual nearness, as 
"your adventure." Still I am not sure but the old text may be right. 
Heath explains it thus : " If you would give credit to the faithful re- 
port of your own eyes, and to the cool dictates of your judgment, rather 
than suffer yourself to be seduced by the bold spirits of your youth." 
But this may be drawing the matter something too fine. 

P. 43. / beseech you, punish ?ne not with your hard thoughts. I con- 
fess me much guilty to deny so fair and excellent ladies any thing : bui 
let your fair eyes and gentle wishes go with me to my trial ; wherein if 
I be foiVd, &c. — The original reads " with your harde thoughts, wherein 
I confesse me," &c. This wherein evidently has no coherence with 
the context. Johnson thought it should be therein ; and Dyce, follow- 
ing Mason, prints herein ; but I cannot see that either of these changes 
helps the matter at all. The word is simply in the way ; and I have 
hardly any doubt that this is an instance of a mistake and the correc- 
tion printed together. — Since the above was written, I rind that Mr. 
Spedding proposes the same reading. 

P. 44. An you mean to mock me after, you should not have mock'd 
me before. — The original omits An. Mason proposed "If you mean," 
&c; which gives the same sense. Theobald thought we ought to read 
"An you mean"; and the Cambridge Editors say the same reading 
occurred to them before they knew of either conjecture. 

P. 45. If you do keep your promises in love, 

But justly, as you have exceeded promise, Sec. — The old text 
reads " have exceeded all promise," which upsets the metre to no pur- 



I46 AS YOU LIKE IT, 

pose. Hanmer printed " as you've here exceeded promise," and 
Walker proposed " excell'd all promise." The reading in the text is 
Capell's. 

P. 47. But yet, indeed, the shorter is his daughter. — Instead of 
shorter, the original has taller, which cannot be right ; as Rosalind 
says, in the next scene, " Because that I am something more than com- 
mon tally Malone substituted smaller, which has commonly been 
received in preference to Rowe's shorter^ which is also found in Col- 
lier's second folio. Walker suspects taller to be " a slip of Shake- 
speare's pen" ; and adds, " The word he had in his thoughts was 
probably shorter, not smaller, which in this sense belongs to later 
English." 

Act i., Scene 3. 

P. 48. Cel. But is all this for your father ? 

Ros. No, some of it is for my father's child. — So Rowe, 
Coleridge, and Collier's second folio. The original has "my child's 
father" which Singer retains, noting that " Rosalind playfully means 
no more than my future husband." Still I think Coleridge's objection 
is good, that by the old reading " a most indelicate anticipation is put 
into the mouth of Rosalind without reason." 

P. 51. No ? hath not? Rosalind lacks, then, the love 

Which teacheth me that thou and I are one. — So Theobald. 
The original reads " Which teacheth thee that thou and I am one." 

P. 51. And do not seek to take the charge upon you 

To bear your griefs yourself, and leave me out. — So Singer, 
followed by White and Dyce. The first folio has " take your change," 
the second, " take your charge." The old contractions of the and your 
were often confounded. 

Act 11., Scene 2. 

P. 53. Here feel 7ve not the penalty of Adam. 
The seasons' difference, and the icy fang 
And churlish chiding of the Winter's loind,— 



CRITICAL NOTES. 147 

Which when it bites and blows upon my body, 
Even till I shrink ivith cold, f smile, and say, 
This is no flattery, — these are counsellors, &c. — In the first 
of these lines, Theobald changed not into but, and has been followed 
by a number of editors. This puts " seasons' difference " in apposition 
with " penalty of Adam." To be sure, the change of seasons was of 
old thought to be a consequence of the Fall ; but I believe it was 
never thought to be the special penalty denounced upon Adam : this 
penalty was, " In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." It is 
also true that this curse was held to be laid upon Adam as head and 
representative of the race, and that the great bulk of mankind have 
ever been subject to it; yet, in matter of fact, there have always been 
some individual exceptions, as the Duke and his co-mates are in their 
exile. This, I think, is enough to render the propriety of Theobald's 
change highly questionable, to say the least. See foot-note I. It is 
but fair to add that the original has a (,) after Adam ; but, in correct- 
ing many thousand pages of proof, I have found hardly any error 
oftener than that of a (,) for a (.). — In the second line, on the other 
hand, the original reads " The seasons difference, as the Icie phange." 
Here as can only be taken as equivalent to as, for instance ; and so it 
is indeed often used. But I think the logic of the passage fairly re- 
quires the sense of " seasons' difference " and of " icy fang " to be 
cumulative. Collier's second folio changes as to or ; and Staunton 
proposes, very plausibly, to substitute at, as also yet for not, thus : 

Here feel we yet the penalty of Adam, 

The seasons' difference: At the icy fang, &c. 

P. 54. Sermons in stones, and good in every thing : 

I would not change it. — In the old text, the words, " I would 
not change it" stand as a part of the next speech. Upton proposed 
the change; and Dyce notes upon it thus: " It seems strange that no 
one before Upton should have seen that they must belong to the Duke, 
and still stranger that, after the error was once pointed out, any editor 
should persist in retaining it." Pretty strong, but, I suspect, about 
right. 

P. 55. Poor deer, quoth he, thou makest a testament 
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more 



I48 AS YOU LIKE IT, 

To that which hath too much : then, being alone y 

Left and abandoned of his velvet friends ; &c. — In the third of 

these lines, the original reads "that which had too mwt" and "then 

being there alone." Also in the last line, the original has " his velvet 

friend." The several corrections have been made by different hands. 

Act 11., Scene 2. 

P. 57. Send to his brother's ; fetch that gallant hither. — The origi- 
nal has brother instead of brother's. As gallant clearly refers to 
Orlando, and as the order is to send to Oliver's house, brother's is 
unquestionably right. Mason's correction. 

P. 57. And let not search and inquisition quail 

To bring again these foolish runaways. — It is straining rather 
hard on the old sense of quail, to make it fit the context here. Lett- 
sora thinks it ought to be fail. 

Act 11., Scene 3. 

P. 58. Why would you be so fond to overcome 

The bony priser of the humorous Duke ? — The original reads 
"The bonnie priser." White retains bonnie, taking it " in the sense in 
which the Scotch use braw." I can see no likelihood that Shakespeare 
would have used the word in that sense ; while bony gives the sense 
of strength, and accords well with the epithet sinewy which is applied 
to Charles in the preceding scene. Warburton's correction. 

P. 60. From seventeen years till now almost fourscore 

Here lived I. — " From seventie years " in the original. A very 
palpable misprint. Corrected by Rowe. 

Act 11., Scene 4. 

P. 61. Ros. Jupiter, how weary are my spirits ! 

Touch. I care not for my spirits, if my legs were not weary. 
— The original has "how merry are my spirits! " which some editors 
retain, as if the occurrence of weary in Touchstone's reply were not 
enough to correct it. 



CRITICAL NOTES. 149 

P. 61. I pray you, bear with me ; I can go no further. — So the 
second folio ; the first, " I cannot go no further." In scene 6 Adam 
s#ys, "Dear master, I can go no further." 

P. 62. Or if thou hast not sat as I do now, 

Wearying thy bearer in thy mistress" 1 praise. — Instead of 
Wearying, the original has Wearing. Corrected in the second folio. 

P. 62. Alas, poor shepherd! searching of thy wound. — The first 
folio has " searching of they would" ; the second, " searching of their 
wound." Corrected by Rowe. 

P. 64. I will your very faithful factor be, 

And buy it with your gold right suddenly. — The original has 
" faithful feeder be." But, surely, feeder has no fitness to signify any 
part of the process of buying the farm, while factor fits the place ex- 
actly, meaning agent, of course. The correction is Walker's. 

Act 11., Scene 5. 

P. 65. And tune his merry note. — The original has turne instead 
of tune. Corrected by Rowe. 

P. 67. Ducadme, ducadme, ducadme. — The original has " Duc- 
dame, ducdame, ducdame " ,• but, as the sense of due ad me was evi- 
dently intended, and as there was no conceivable reason for transposing 
the letters ad into da, I concur with White in thinking the transposition 
to have been accidental. Hanmer prints " due ad me." 

Act 11., Scene 7. 

P. 71. He that a Fool doth very ivisely hit 

Doth very foolishly, although he smart, 

Not to seem senseless of the bob : if not, 

The wise man's folly is anatomized, &c. — So Theobald, and 
most of the editors since his time; the words Not to, in the third line, 
being omitted in the original. Collier's second folio reads " But to 



150 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

seem senseless "; which reading, to my surprise, is preferred to Theo 
bald's by White and Dyce. I cannot imagine what meaning they 
attach to senseless, that they should stick in such preference. Perhaps 
they would avoid the repetition of not in the same line ; but, in doing 
so, they quite overthrow, as it seems to me, the sense of the passage. 
For senseless of means the same, 1 take it, as insensible lo. And the 
meaning clearly is, that he who feels himself hit must seem not to feel 
it ; and if he does not so seem, he simply exposes himself. — Perhaps 
I ought to add, that Dr. Ingleby sustains the old text ; but his argu- 
ment seems to me the ne plus ultra of overstrained refinement; run- 
ning clean away from common sense in quest of a meaning that no 
theatrical audience would ever begin to apprehend. 

P. 71. Doth it not floiv as hugely as the sea, 

Till that the wearer's very means do ebb ? — Instead of 7vearer's, 
the original has wearie, which was a standing puzzle to the editors, till 
Singer hit upon the very happy correction. 

P. 72. Where then ? hoiu then ? what then ? let's see zuherein 

My tongue hath wronged him. — So Lettsom. The original 
reads "There then, how then, what then, let me see wherein," &c. 
Malone, also, proposed to substitute Where for There ; and the con- 
traction of let vie into let's is of course made for metre's sake. 

P. 73. I almost die for food ; so let me have it. — Instead of so, the 
old text has and ; which, as Lettsom judged, was probably " an error 
caused by and occurring twice in the next line." Dyce proposed so. 

P. 74. And one man in his time plays many parts, 
His acts being seven ages. As, first the infant, 
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms : 

And then the whining schoolboy, &c. — Instead of "As, first," 
the old text has "At first." Corrected by Walker. As, here, has the 
force of to wit or namely ; a frequent usage. — In the fourth line, the 
original is without And, which was supplied by Rowe for obvious rea- 
sons. — Further on in the same speech the old text has " Then a sol- 
dier " instead of "Then the soldier"; a change made by Dyce at the 
suggestion of Mr. Robson. The expressions "the infant," "the school- 
boy," "the lover," "the justice," &c, clearly approve it. 



CRITICAL NOTES. 15 I 

P. 76. Thy tooth is not so keen 

Because thou art foreseen. — The original reads " Because thou 
art not seen " / which is to me utterly unintelligible, or rather meaning- 
less, and which is proved to be wrong by the many strained attempts 
at explanation. Various changes have been proposed ; that in the 
text is Staunton's, and is far the best. 

P. 77. If thai you are the good Sir Roland's son, — 

As you have whisper 1 d faithfully you are. — The original has 
were — were, instead of are — are. The change was suggested by 
Dyce, and is also proposed by Mr. P. A. Daniel. It occurred to me 
also before I knew of its having been proposed. 

Act hi., Scene i. 

P. 77. Not seen him since ? — So Collier's second folio and Singer. 
The old copies, "Not see him since?" 

Act hi., Scene 2. 

P. 80. Not a tvhit, Master Touchstone. — So Capell ; in accordance 
with Corin's first speech in this scene : " And how like you this shep- 
herd's life, Master Touchstone?" The old text omits Master. As 
Dyce remarks, the letter M., which often stood for Master, " might 
easily be omitted." 

F. 82. Let no face be kept in mind 

But the face of Rosalind. — So Rowe, followed by Dyce. The 
original reads " But the fair e of Rosalind." 

P. 82. // is the right butter-woman 's rack to market. — Instead of 
rack, the original has rank, which is certainly wrong. Hanmer sub- 
stitutes rate, but Crosby's rack is much better. See foot-note 1 7. 

P. 83. Then will it bear the earliest fruit z' the country. — The 
original reads " Then will it be the earliest fruit." Lettsom says, 
" Read bear ; for it refers to the tree that is to be graffed." Right, 
clearly. 



152 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

P. 83. Why should this a desert be. — Here a is wanting in the old 
text, and was supplied by Rowe. 

P. 84. O most gentle pulpiter ! what tedious homily of love have you, 
&c. — The original has Jupiter instead of pulpiter. Corrected by Mr. 
Spedding, and in the Cambridge Shakespeare. The word homily 
abundantly approves the correction. 



P. 86. Good my complection, dost thou think, &c. — So the word is 
spelt in the original, but is generally changed in modern editions to 
complexion, which gives a very different sense, if indeed it can be fairly 
explained to any sense at all. The meaning is, " My good complicator ." 
Heath notes upon the passage thus : " I am inclinable to imagine that 
the Poet may possibly have written ' Good my coz perplexerj that is, I 
pr'ythee, my perplexing coz." See foot-note 28. 

P. 88. It may well be calVd Jove's tree, when it drops such fruit. 
— The first folio reads "drops forth fruit"; the second, "drops forth 
such fruit." I agree with Singer that forth was most probably a mis- 
print for such. Corrected by Capell. 

P. 88. Cry, holla ! to thy tongue, I pr'ythee. — The old text has " to 
the tongue." An erratum hardly worth noting. 

P. 88. God b' wi' you ! let's meet as little as we can. — Here and in 
many other places the old text prints " God buy you." Also in iv. 1, 
of this play: "Nay, then, God buy you, an you talk in blank-verse." 
And in v. 3 : " God buy you ; and God mend your voices." Of course 
it is the old contraction of " God be with you," which has been still 
further shortened into good bye. I marvel that our modern sticklers for 
archaic forms and archaic spelling, who make so much of retaining the 
old possessive it, and of printing it's, wherever it occurs, for its, — I 
marvel that they so generally ignore this archaism. Standing on such 
points, where nothing either of sense or of metre or of rhyme is in- 
volved, seems to me indeed sheer pedantry, or affectation, or some- 
thing worse ; still I think consistency may be worth something. 



CRITICAL NOTES. I 53 

P. 92. Every one fault seeming most monstrous till his fellow-fault 
came to match it. — So Walker. The original is without most, which 
seems fairly needful to the sense ; and Walker points out a large num- 
ber of like omissions under the heading " Omissions in consequence of 
Absorption." 

P. 94. / drave my suitor from his mad humour of love to a loving 
humour of madness. — The original reads " to a living humour of mad- 
ness." Johnson proposed loving as required for the antithesis clearly 
intended. Walker says, " Of course, loving" 

Act hi., Scene 3. 

P. 96. And what they swear in poetry, it may be said, as lovers, they 
do feign. — So Mason and Collier's second folio. The original omits */. 

P. 97. No assembly but horn'd beasts. — The old text has home- 
beasts. The correction is Walker's, who cites a multitude of cases in 
which " final </and final <?" have evidently been confounded. 

Act hi., Scene 4. 

P. 100. He hath bought a pair of chaste lips of Diana : a nun oj 
Winters sisterhood kisses not more religiously ; the very ice of chastity 
is in them. — So the second folio. The first has " a paire of cast lips." 
I marvel that the editors should so generally have retained cast, with 
the word chastity before them in the same sentence. 

P. 100. They are both the confirmers of false reckonings. — The origi- 
nal has confirmer instead of confirmers. Hardly worth noting, per 
haps. Corrected by Pope. 

P. 100. As a puny titter, that spurs his horse but on one side, breaks 
his staff like a noble goose. — I do not well understand this noble goose. 
Hanmer printed " a nose-quilVd goose," which I understand still less. 
Singer prints " like a notable goose," which I more than suspect to be 
right. 



154 AS Y0U LIKE IT - 

P. IOI. Bring us to see this sight, and you shall say 

I prove a busy actor in their play. — The original wants see s 
which was proposed by Jervis. And rightly, no doubt ; for it is in- 
credible that the Poet would have left such a gap in one line of a 
rhyming couplet. — The old text also begins the second line with "He 
prove." 

Act hi., Scene 5. 

P. 102. The cicatrice and capable impressure 

Thy palm some moment keeps. — Singer and Collier's second 
folio change capable to palpable ; perhaps rightly. See foot-note 3. — 
In the preceding line, the old text omits but ; an error which the metre 
naturally corrects. 

P. 103. That you insult, exult, and all at once. — It has been asked 
what " all at once " can possibly mean here ; and Singer follows War- 
burton in substituting rail for all. But Staunton shows that all at once 
was in common use as a sort of expletive phrase. So in The Fisher- 
man's Tale, 1594: "She wept, she cride, she sob'd,- and all at once." 
Also in Middleton's Changeling, iv. 3 : " Does love turn fool, run mad, 
and all at once ? " And in King Henry V., i. I : " Nor never Hydra- 
headed wilfulness so soon did lose his seat, and all at once y as in this 
King." 

P. 103. What though you have no beauty, &c. — There has been a deal 
of stumbling at this passage. Instead of no, Hanmer printed some, 
and is followed by Dyce ; while Malone proposed and Steevens 
adopted more. For my part, I am quite unable to see the force of the 
objections to the original reading, "no beauty." See foot-note 5. 

P. 104. He 's fallen in love with her foulness, and she'll fall in love 
with my anger. — So Hanmer. The original reads " with your foul- 
nesse." The next clause points out the correction. 

P. 106. He is not tall ; yet for his years he's tall. — So Capell. The 
old text has " He is not very tall," thus overfilling the verse. Walker 
justly includes this among the various instances, which he quotes, of 
very interpolated. 



CRITICAL NOTES. 1 55 



Act iv., Scene i. 

P. 108. The sundry contemplation of my travels, on which my often 
rumination 7vraps me in a most humorous sadness. — Here the first 
folio has " in which by often rumination "; the second, " in which my 
often." Singer and Dyce throw out the in altogether, and, retaining 
by, make xvhich the subject of wraps ; thus, — "which, by often rumi- 
nation, wraps me," &c. The reading in the text was proposed by 
Jervis. 

P. 109. A better jointure, I think, than you can make a woman. — 
So Hanmer ; the original, " than you make." 

P. 1 10. And the foolish chroniclers of that age found it was — Hero of 
Sestos. — For chroniclers Hanmer and Collier's second folio substitute 
coroners. Rightly, I suspect ; notwithstanding Lettsom's opinion that 
" the plural number, and the phrase of that age, tell the other way." 

P. 112. Men are April when they ivoo, December when they're wed. 
— The original reads " December when they wed." The correction is 
Mr. P. A. Daniel's. 

P. 113. 0, that woman that cannot make her fault her husband' 's 
occasion, let her never nurse her child herself, &c. — Hanmer changed 
occasion to accusation, which Singer adopts. The change seems so 
apt and just, that I have had much ado to resist it ; for the interpreta- 
tion commonly given to the passage comes, I think, rather too hard 
out of the words to be fairly admissible. See foot-note 1 7. 

P. 1 14. I tell thee, Aliena, I cannot be out of the sight of Orlando. — 
Here, again, the original has " He tell." 

Act iv., Scene 2. 

P. 115. [They sing him home, the rest bearing this burden.'] — Here 
the original has " Then sing him home, the rest shall beare this bur- 
then," all as the third line of the song, and printed in the same type as 



156 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

the rest. Of modern editors, some print the whole line as a stage- 
direction ; others print the first four words, " Then sing him borne," as 
the third line of the song, and the rest as a stage-direction. White 
and Dyce are among the former ; Singer and Staunton among the 
latter. I cannot but think it rather unlike Shakespeare to break up 
the proper symmetry of a lyrical strain, by thrusting in such an excep- 
tional line as the four words make in this case. 

Act iv., Scene 3. 

P. 1 15. My gentle Phebe bid me give you this. — So the second folio ; 
the first, "Phebe dfo/bid me." 

P. 118. The boy is fair \ 

Of female favour, but bestows himself 

Like a right forester ; the woman low, 

And browner than her brother. Are not you 

The owners of the house I did inquire for ? — I here adopt the 
reading proposed by Lettsom, with great ingenuity certainly, and, I 
think, with excellent judgment also. In the second line the original 
has and instead of but, and in the third ripe sister instead of right 
forester. The hole left in the verse by sister was stopped with but by 
the editor of the second folio, probably with no other thought than to 
rectify the metre. Walker remarks upon the passage that " A ripe 
sister seems an odd expression." Odd it certainly is, and, I think, out 
of keeping with the character and situation ; while it were an easy 
gloss or corruption of right forester, when s was written long, so as to 
be hardly distinguishable from f The substitution of but for and is 
not so clear ; but the play has fifty undoubted misprints that are 
hardly more easy to account for. — In the last line also, the original 
has owner instead of owners. The context readily suggests the cor- 
rection. 

P. 119. Chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. — The old text 
has food instead of cud. The correction was made by Sir Walter Scott 
in the Preface to Quentin Durward, and is adopted by Staunton 
and Dyce ; the former remarking that " to chew the cud, metaphori- 
cally, to ruminate, to revolve in the mind, is an expression of frequent 
occurrence in our old authors." 



CRITICAL NOTES. 157 

P. 119. Under an oak, whose boughs were moss'd with age. — The 
original reads " Under an old oak" ; where old is palpably redundant 
both in sense and in metre. Even White, stickler as he is for the 
text of the first folio, gives up old here. 

P. 121. And to give this napkin, 

Dyed in his blood, unto the shepherd youth, &c. — The original 
has "Died in this bloud"; this being evidently repeated by mistake 
from the preceding line. Corrected in the second folio. 

Act v., Scene i. 

P. 124. Or, clown, thou per ishest ; or, to thy better understanding, 
diest ; to wit, I kill thee, &c. — The original prints "dyest; or (to wit) 
I kill thee"; the or being probably repeated once too much by mis- 
take. Modern editions generally strike out the marks of parenthesis : 
Farmer proposed, and Steevens adopted, the erasure of or, as Dyce 
also does. 

Act v., Scene 2. 

P. 127. Speak 1 st thou in sober meaning? — The old text has mean- 
ings. Corrected by Walker. 

P. 128. All adoration, duty, and observance, 

All humbleness, all patience, and impatience, 

All purity, all trial, all endurance. — In the last of these lines, 
the original repeats observance. Collier's second folio changes the 
first observance to obedience, and is followed by White and Dyce. I 
think Singer's change of the second observance to endurance is, on the 
whole, preferable. 

P. 1 29. Who do you speak to, Why blame you me to love you ? — 
The original reads " Why do you speak too " ; which the next speech 
proves to be wrong. Corrected by Rowe. 

Act v., Scene 3. 

P. 130. Which are only the prologues to a bad voice. — The original 
reads the only. The correction is CapelPs. 



158 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

P. 131. Ln spring-time, the only pretty x'mg-time. — The original 
has rang instead of ring, and also transposes the last stanza into the 
place of the second. Both corrections are found in Chappell's Popu- 
lar Music of the Olden Time, where the song is printed from a manu- 
script in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. Steevens, however, had 
conjectured ring before, and Thirlby the transposition of the stanzas. 

P. 131. Yet the note was very untimeable. — So Theobald and Col- 
lier's second folio. The old text has untunable, which the Page's 
reply, " we lost not our time," shows to be wrong. 

Act v., Scene 4. 

P. 132. As those that fear to hope, and know they fear. — So Col- 
lier's second folio. The original has "that fear they hope." Many 
changes in the text have been made or proposed; but this, I think, re- 
moves the most difficulty with the least change. 

P. 133. Keep your 7vord, Phebe, that you'll marry me. — The origi- 
nal has "Keep you your word"; another instance of mistaken repeti- 
tion from the context. Corrected by Pope. 

P. 134. Jaq. How, the Seventh Cause? — The old text omits the 
here ; but the next speech of Jaques shows that it ought not to be 
omitted : " But, for the Seventh Cause," &c. 

P. 135. According to the fool's bolt, sir, and such dulcet diseases. — 
So the original. Various changes have been proposed, in order to 
make sense of the passage ; and several modes of punctuation have 
been tried, to the same end ; but nothing satisfactory has been 
reached. It is not unlikely that the text may be corrupt ; but I 
suspect it to be merely an instance of elaborate nonsense, purposely 
framed to the style of those who " for a tricksy word defy the matter." 
See The Merchant, page 159, note 7. 

P. 136. And so to the Lie Circumstantial and the Lie Direct. — 
The original omits the before Lie Circumstantial. Supplied in the 
second folio. 



CRITICAL NOTES. 159 

P. 137. That thou mighst join her hand with his 

Whose heart within her bosom is. — In both of these lines the 
original misprints his for her ; which makes stark nonsense of the pas- 
sage. Corrected by Malone. 

P. 137. Duke S. If there he truth in sight, you are tny daughter. 
Orl. If there be truth in shape, you are my Rosalind. 
Phe. If sight and shape be true, 
Why, then, — my love adieu. — In the second of these lines, 
the original has sight instead of shape ; doubtless repeated by mistake 
from the line before : at all events, Phebe's speech shows sight to be 
an error. The correction was proposed by Johnson, but Walker 
seems to have hit upon it independently. 

P. 139. Even daughter-welcome, — in no less degree. — So Theo- 
bald, and Walker without knowing how Theobald had printed the 
line. Commonly printed " Even daughter, ' welcome in no less de- 
gree "; which plainly inverts, or at least upsets, the meaning intended. 

P. 139. And all their lands restored to them again 

That were with him exiled. — The original has " restor'd to 
him again." The were in the next clause corrects the error. 

Epilogue. 

P. 141. I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like 
as much of this play as please you. — I more than suspect that, instead 
of "as please you," we ought to read " as pleases them:' Warburton 
thought the error proceeded further, and reformed the latter member 
of the sentence, thus : " And I charge you, O men, for the love you 
bear to women, (as I perceive by your simpering, none of you hates 
them,) to like as much as pleases them ; that between you and the 
women the play may please." Perhaps this may look too much like 
making the Epilogue " speak by the card." 



jUN 33 1908 



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